Related papers: Emergent Strain-Stiffening in Interlocked Granular…
The strain-rate sensitivity of confined granular materials has been widely explored, with most findings exhibiting rate-strengthening behaviors. This study, however, reveals a distinct rate-softening behavior across a certain strain rate…
Repeated/cyclic shearing can drive amorphous solids to a steady-state encoding a memory of the applied strain amplitude. However, recent experiments find that the effect of such memory formation on the mechanical properties of the bulk…
We use molecular simulations to study jamming of a crumpled bead-spring model polymer in a finite container and compare to jamming of repulsive spheres. After proper constraint counting, the onset of rigidity is seen to occur isostatically…
The evolution of the internal granular structure in shear-arrested and shear-flowing states of granular materials is characterized using fabric tensors as descriptors of the internal contact and force networks. When a dilute system of…
Two interleaved phonebooks are nearly impossible to separate by pulling their spines. The very slight force exerted by the outer sheets of the assembly is amplified as the exponential of the square of the number of sheets, leading to a…
We model two-dimensional systems of granular aggregates confined between two planes and demonstrate that at a critical grain volume fraction an abrupt rigidity transition occurs. This transition is observed both in static and shear tests.…
The consolidation of suspended particulate matter under external forces such as pressure or gravity is of widespread interest. In this work, we derive a constitutive relation to describe the deformation of a {\it two-dimensional} strongly…
We study the outflow dynamics and clogging phenomena of mixtures of soft, elastic low-friction spherical grains and hard frictional spheres of similar size in a quasi-two-dimensional (2D) silo with narrow orifice at the bottom. Previous…
The interplay of inertia and elasticity is shown to have a significant impact on the transport of filamentary objects, modelled by bead-spring chains, in a two-dimensional turbulent flow. We show how elastic interactions amongst inertial…
This is the second paper of a series of three investigating, by numerical means, the geometric and mechanical properties of spherical bead packings under isotropic stresses. We study the effects of varying the applied pressure P (from 1 or…
The existence of a very special ratcheting regime has recently been reported in a granular packing subjected to cyclic loading \cite{alonso04}. In this state, the system accumulates a small permanent deformation after each cycle. After a…
Stress paths in granular matter often suffer sudden large-scale rearrangements when the system is slightly perturbed, i.e. granular systems are unstable. We show in this paper that the observed instability is due to the minimally rigid, or…
Constant temperature molecular dynamics simulations were used to study solutions of flexible polyelectrolyte chains at nonzero concentrations with explicit counterions and unscreened coulombic interactions. Counterion condensation, measured…
Bistability and snap-through instabilities are central to various mechanisms in nature and engineering, enabling rapid movement and large shape changes with minimal energy input. These phenomena are easily demonstrated by bending a piece of…
We study the conformations of polymer chains in a poor solvent, with and without bending rigidity, by means of a simple statistical mechanics model. This model can be exactly solved for chains of length up to N=55 using exact enumeration…
Herein, we describe new methods to produce colloidal particle chains of three stiffness regimes that can be observed on a single-particle level, that is, on the level of the monomers that make up the chain; the chains can even be observed…
Some important biomolecules (for instance, bacterial FtsZ and eukaryotic DNA) are known to posses spontaneous (intrinsic) curvature. Using a simple extension of the wormlike chain model, we study the response of a weakly bending filament in…
Recent step strain experiments in well-entangled polymeric liquids demonstrated a bulk fracture-like phenomenon. We have studied this instability using a modern version of the Doi-Edwards theory for entangled polymers, and we find close…
Motivated by recent advances in single molecule manipulation techniques that enabled several groups to tie knots in individual polymer strands and to monitor their dynamics, we have used computer simulations to study "friction knots"…
A growing or compressed thin elastic sheet adhered to a rigid substrate can exhibit a buckling instability, forming an inward hump. Our study shows that the strip morphology depends on the delicate balance between the compression energy and…