Related papers: Corners in soft solids behave as defects in crysta…

Soft solids and their surface deformations control the response of many natural and artificial systems. Yet, their underlying properties are vigorously debated, particularly for polymer networks. While molecular-scale theories predict no…

Surface energy is fundamental in controlling surface properties and surface-driven processes like heterogeneous catalysis, as adsorption energy is. It is thus crucial to establish an effective scheme to determine surface energy and its…

We connect the theories of the deformation of elastic surfaces and phase surfaces arising in the description of almost periodic patterns. In particular, we show parallels between asymptotic expansions for the energy of elastic surfaces in…

The spreading of liquid drops on soft substrates is extremely slow, owing to strong viscoelastic dissipation inside the solid. A detailed understanding of the spreading dynamics has remained elusive, partly owing to the difficulty in…

We report on a simulational study of the compression and buckling of elastic ridges formed by joining the boundary of a flat sheet to itself. Such ridges store energy anomalously: their resting energy scales as the linear size of the sheet…

An exact description is provided of an almost spherical fluid vesicle with a fixed area and a fixed enclosed volume locally deformed by external normal forces bringing two nearby points on the surface together symmetrically. The conformal…

Soft solids differ from stiff solids in an important way: their surface stresses can drive large deformations. Based on a topical workshop held in the Lorentz Center in Leiden, this Opinion highlights some recent advances in the growing…

A new phase field model of microstructural evolution is presented that includes the effects of elastic strain energy. The model's thin interface behavior is investigated by mapping it onto a recent model developed by Echebarria et al (Phys…

A four dimensional conformally invariant energy is studied. This energy generalises the well known two-dimensional Willmore energy. Although not positive definite, it includes minimal hypersurfaces as critical points. We compute its first…

Surface stresses have recently emerged as a key player in the mechanics of highly compliant solids. The classic theories of contact mechanics describe adhesion with a compliant substrate as a competition between surface energies driving…

We investigate connections between the continuum and atomistic descriptions of deformable crystals, using certain interesting results from number theory. The energy of a deformed crystal is calculated in the context of a lattice model with…

Symmetry plays a key role in determining the physical properties of materials. By Neumann's principle, the properties of a material are invariant under the symmetry operations of the space group to which the material belongs. Continuous…

In complex crystals close to melting or at finite temperatures, different types of defects are ubiquitous and their role becomes relevant in the mechanical response of these solids. Conventional elasticity theory fails to provide a…

We study the influence of surface roughness on the adhesion of elastic solids. Most real surfaces have roughness on many different length scales, and this fact is taken into account in our analysis. We consider in detail the case when the…

We investigate the emergence of rigid polycrystalline structures from atomistic particle systems. The atomic interaction is governed by a suitably normalized pair interaction energy, where the `sticky disk' interaction potential models the…

Within the framework of continuum theory, we draw a parallel between ferromagnetic materials and nematic liquid crystals confined on curved surfaces, which are both characterized by local interaction and anchoring potentials. We show that…

Liquid capillary-bridge formation between solid particles has a critical influence on the rheological properties of granular materials and, in particular, on the efficiency of fluidized bed reactors. The available analytical and…

The contact angle that a liquid drop makes on a soft substrate does not obey the classical Young's relation, since the solid is deformed elastically by the action of the capillary forces. The finite elasticity of the solid also renders the…

Most of crystalline materials exhibit a hysteresis on their deformation curve when mechanically loaded in alternating directions. This Bauschinger effect is the signature of mechanisms existing at the atomic scale and controlling the…

We investigate a counterintuitive geometric interaction between defects and curvature in thin layers of superfluids, superconductors and liquid crystals deposited on curved surfaces. Each defect feels a geometric potential whose functional…