Related papers: Emergent Strain-Stiffening in Interlocked Granular…
We investigate the effects of chain flexibility on the self-assembly behavior of symmetric diblock copolymers (BCPs) when they are confined as a thin film between two surfaces. Employing worm-like chain (WLC) self-consistent field theory,…
We experimentally investigate the clogging process of granular materials in a two-dimensional hopper, and present a self-consistent physical mechanism of clogging based on preformed dynamic chain structures in the flow. We found that these…
The folding transition of biopolymers from the coil to compact structures has attracted wide research interest in the past and is well studied in polymer physics. Recent seminal works on DNA in confined devices have shown that these long…
We experimentally study a one-dimensional uncompressed granular chain composed of a finite number of identical spherical beads with Hertzian interactions. The chain is harmonically excited by an amplitude- and frequency-dependent boundary…
Our understanding of the elasticity and rheology of disordered materials, such as granular piles, foams, emulsions or dense suspensions relies on improving experimental tools to characterize their behaviour at the particle scale. While 2D…
By means of two-dimensional contact dynamics simulations, we analyze the vibrational dynamics of a confined granular layer in response to harmonic forcing. We use irregular polygonal grains allowing for strong variability of solid fraction.…
We study the deformations of elastic filaments confined within slowly-shrinking circular boundaries, under contact forces with friction. We perform computations with a spring-lattice model that deforms like a thin inextensible filament of…
Confinement of a slender body into a granular array induces stress localization in the geometrically nonlinear structure, and jamming, reordering, and vertical dislocation of the surrounding granular medium. By varying the initial packing…
We have used density functional perturbation theory to investigate the stiffness of interatomic bonds in small clusters of Si, Sn and Pb. As the number of atoms in a cluster is decreased, there is a marked shortening and stiffening of…
We employ a first principles, force-level approach to self-consistently construct the anharmonic tube confinement field for entangled fluids of rigid needles and for primitive-path (PP) level chains in two limiting situations where chain…
This work is focused on investigating the impact of out-of-plane stitches on enhancing mode-II interlaminar fracture toughness (or energy) and characterizing damage progression and crack arrestment in stitched resin-infused composites. For…
For thin networked materials, which are spatial discrete structures constructed by continuum components, a paradox on the effective thickness defined by the in-plane and out-of-plane stiffnesses is found, i.e. the effective thickness is not…
Using cyclic shear to drive a two dimensional granular system, we determine the structural characteristics for different inter-particle friction coefficients. These characteristics are the result of a competition between mechanical…
We study the friction between a flat solid surface where polymer chains have been end-grafted and a cross-linked elastomer at low sliding velocity. The contribution of isolated grafted chains' penetration in the sliding elastomer has been…
In this work, a higher-order irrotational strain gradient plasticity theory is studied in the small strain regime. A detailed numerical study is based on the problem of simple shear of a non-homogeneous block comprising an elastic-plastic…
We characterize the fluctuation properties of a polymer chain under external tension and the fluctuation-induced forces between two ring molecules threaded around the chain. The problem is relevant in the context of fluctuation-induced…
Entangled states are ubiquitous amongst fibrous materials, whether naturally occurring (keratin, collagen, DNA) or synthetic (nanotube assemblies, elastane). A key mechanical characteristic of these systems is their ability to reorganise in…
Depletion-induced aggregation of rods enhanced by clustering is observed to produce a novel model of attractive pairs of rods separated by a line of spheres in a quasi-2D, vertically-shaken, granular gas of rods and spheres. We show that…
Although the stretching of polymers and biomolecules is important in numerous settings, their response when confined to two-dimensions is relatively poorly-studied. In this paper, we derive closed-form analytical expressions for the…
Dense granular systems subjected to an imposed shear stress undergo stick-slip dynamics with systematic patterns of dilation-compaction. During each stick phase, as the frictional strength builds up, the granular system dilates to…