Related papers: Strain-stiffening gels based on latent crosslinkin…
One of the fascinating properties of the new families of two-dimensional crystals is their high stretchability and the possibility to use external strain to manipulate, in a controlled manner, their optical and electronic properties. Strain…
We present a theoretical framework for the linear and nonlinear visco-elastic properties of reversibly crosslinked networks of semiflexible polymers. In contrast to affine models where network strain couples to the polymer end-to-end…
Nature provides examples of self-assemble lightweight disordered network structures with remarkable mechanical properties which are desirable for many applications purposes but challenging to reproduce artificially. Previous experimental…
Dicing soft solids with a sharp knife is quicker and smoother if the blade is sliding rapidly parallel to its edge in addition to the normal squeezing motion. We explain this common observation with a consistent theory suited for soft gels…
Soft particulate gels include materials we can eat, squeeze, or 3D print. From foods to bio-inks to cement hydrates, these gels are composed of a small amount of particulate matter (proteins, polymers, colloidal particles, or agglomerates…
Concentrated particulate suspensions, commonplace in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food industries, display intriguing rheology. In particular, the dramatic increase in viscosity with strain rate (shear thickening and jamming) which is…
Thermo-responsive hydrogels are smart materials that rapidly switch between hydrophilic (swollen) and hydrophobic (shrunken) states when heated past a threshold temperature, resulting in order-of-magnitude changes in gel volume. Modelling…
Dispersing small particles in a liquid can produce surprising behaviors when the solids fraction becomes large: rapid shearing drives these systems out of equilibrium and can lead to dramatic increases in viscosity (shear-thickening) or…
Molecular-motor generated active stresses drive the cytoskeleton away from equilibrium, endowing it with tunable mechanical properties that are essential for diverse functions such as cell division and motility[1-5]. Designing analogous…
A buckled sheet offers a reservoir of material that can be unfurled at a later time. For sufficiently thin yet stiff materials, this geometric process has a striking mechanical feature: when the slack runs out, the material locks to further…
We derive the effective energy density of thin membranes of liquid crystal elastomers as the Gamma-limit of a widely used bulk model. These membranes can display fine-scale features both due to wrinkling that one expects in thin elastic…
Materials with J-shaped stress-strain behavior under uniaxial stretching, where strength increases as deformation progresses, have been developed through various materials designs. On the other hand, polymer materials that progressively…
We introduce a strain-energy based nonlinear hyper-elastic formulation to model the material properties of ultrasoft dielectric elastomers over a wide range of elastic properties, prestretch, and thicknesses. We build on the uniaxial Gent…
Many biological tissues feature a heterogeneous network of fibers whose tensile and bending rigidity contribute substantially to these tissues' elastic properties. Rigidity percolation has emerged as a important paradigm for relating these…
We study model near-critical polymer gelling systems made of gluten proteins dispersions stabilized at different distances from the gel point. We impose different shear rates and follow the time evolution of the stress. For sufficiently…
The effect of tensile stress applied during cooling of binary glasses on the potential energy states and mechanical properties is investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. We study the three-dimensional binary mixture that was…
The contact line of a liquid drop on a solid exerts a nanometrically sharp surface traction. This provides an unprecedented tool to study highly localised and dynamic surface deformations of soft polymer networks. One of the outstanding…
Microgels are soft colloidal particles constituted by cross-linked polymer networks with a high potential for applications. In particular, after adsorption at a fluid interface, interfacial tension provides two-dimensional (2D) confinement…
The functionality of adhesives relies on their response under the application of a load. Yet, it has remained a challenge to quantitatively relate the macroscopic dynamics of peeling to the dissipative processes inside the adhesive layer.…
We use optical tweezers microrheology and fluorescence microscopy to apply nonlinear microscale strains to entangled and crosslinked actin networks, and measure the resulting stress and actin filament deformations. We couple nonlinear…