Related papers: Emergent Strain-Stiffening in Interlocked Granular…
Soft composite solids, comprising discrete inclusions embedded within a compliant matrix, are emerging candidates for engineering synthetic tissues and soft robotic materials. Current strategies for controlling their nonlinear mechanics,…
We introduce a model for yielding, inspired by fracture models and the failure of a sheared granular medium in which the applied shear is resisted by self-organized force chains. The force chains in the granular medium (GM) are considered…
The material characterization of ultra-thin solid sheets, including two-dimensional materials like graphene, is often performed through indentation tests on a flake suspended over a hole in a substrate. While this `suspended indentation' is…
Recently single molecule experiments have shown the importance of internal friction in biopolymer dynamics. Such studies also suggested that the internal friction although independent of solvent viscosity has strong dependence on denaturant…
Semiflexible polymers are ubiquitous in natural and artificial systems, where their intermediate rigidity gives rise to rich structural and dynamical behavior. Confinement plays a central role in these behaviors, as spatial restrictions can…
This work is a continuation of the ongoing research on deformation behavior of reinforced concrete elements under tension. The previous studies have revealed that deformation behaviors of elements reinforced with multiple bars and the…
We observe and analyze the phenomenon of bistability emergent from cooperative stiffening in hyper-elastic metamaterials. Using experimental and numerical results of identical geometric designs, we show evidence that a single unit is…
Rigid particles pack into structures, such as sand dunes on the beach, whose overall stability is determined by the average number of contacts between particles. However, when packing spatially extended objects with flexible shapes,…
Collective behavior of bacterial colonies plays critical roles in adaptability, survivability, biofilm expansion and infection. We employ an individual-based model of an interstitial biofilm to study emergent pattern formation based on the…
The sliding friction force exerted by stochastic linkers interacting with a moving filament is calculated. The elastic properties of the substrate on which the linkers are anchored are shown to strongly influence the friction force. In some…
Inspired by the ubiquity of composite filamentous networks in nature we investigate models of biopolymer networks that consist of interconnected floppy and stiff filaments. Numerical simulations carried out in three dimensions allow us to…
Two counter-propagating cool and equally dense electron beams are modelled with particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The electron beam filamentation instability is examined in one spatial dimension. The box length resolves one pair of…
Unlike most synthetic materials, biological materials often stiffen as they are deformed. This nonlinear elastic response, critical for the physiological function of some tissues, has been documented since at least the 19th century, but the…
The complex incremental behavior of granular materials is explored with multi-directional loading probes. An advanced discrete element model (DEM) was used to examine the reversible and irreversible strains for small loading probes, which…
We study the buckling of a one fiber composite whose matrix stiffness is slightly dependent on the compressive force. We show that the equilibrium curves of the system exhibit a limit load when the induced stiffness parameter gets bigger…
We investigate the role of friction in compaction and segregation of granular materials by combining Edwards' thermodynamic hypothesis with a simple mechanical model and mean-field based geometrical calculations. Systems of single species…
Frustration arises for a broad class of physical systems where confinement (geometric) or the presence of a perturbation (kinematic) prevents equilibration to a minimum energy state. By varying the diameter ratio and packing fraction in…
We describe a simple meanfield variational approach to study a number of properties of intrinsically stiff chains which are appropriate models for a large class of biopolymers. We present the calculation of the distribution of end-to-end…
Recent experimental results on the static or quasistatic response of granular materials have been interpreted to suggest the inapplicability of the traditional engineering approaches, which are based on elasto-plastic models (which are…
We present an experiment in which a horizontal quasi-2D granular system with a fixed neighbor network is cyclically compressed and decompressed over 1000 cycles. We remove basal friction by floating the particles on a thin air cushion, so…