Related papers: A minimal-length approach unifies rigidity in unde…
Topological states can be used to control the mechanical properties of a material along an edge or around a localized defect. The surface rigidity of elastic networks is characterized by a bulk topological invariant called the polarization;…
The buckling of a soft elastic sample under growth or swelling has highlighted a new interest in materials science, morphogenesis, and biology or physiology. Indeed, the change of mass or volume is a common fact of any living species, and…
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…
In this paper we are concerned with the problem of a crack lying at the interface between dissimilar materials with microstructure undergoing antiplane deformations. The micropolar behaviour of the materials is described by the theory of…
Metric anomalies arising from a distribution of point defects (intrinsic interstitials, vacancies, point stacking faults), thermal deformation, biological growth, etc. are well known sources of material inhomogeneity and internal stress. By…
Nanoindentation techniques recently developed to measure the mechanical response of crystals under external loading conditions reveal new phenomena upon decreasing sample size below the microscale. At small length scales, material…
We study the rigidity of body-and-cad frameworks which capture the majority of the geometric constraints used in 3D mechanical engineering CAD software. We present a combinatorial characterization of the generic minimal rigidity of a subset…
Combinatorial characterisations of minimal rigidity are obtained for symmetric 2-dimensional bar-joint frameworks with either $\ell^1$ or $\ell^\infty$ distance constraints. The characterisations are expressed in terms of symmetric tree…
The loading of a granular material induces anisotropies of the particle arrangement (fabric) and of the material's strength, incremental stiffness, and permeability. Thirteen measures of fabric anisotropy are developed, which are arranged…
In this contribution, we present a new Materials Knowledge System framework for microstructure-sensitive predictions of effective stress--strain responses in composite materials. The model is developed for composites with a wide range of…
The paper concerns the problem of minimization of the compliance of linear elastic structures made of an isotropic material. The bulk and shear moduli are the design variables, both viewed as non-negative fields on the design domain. The…
In this work we construct a low-order nonconforming approximation method for linear elasticity problems supporting general meshes and valid in two and three space dimensions. The method is obtained by hacking the Hybrid High-Order method,…
The lowest order nonconforming rectangular element in three dimensions involves 54 degrees of freedom for the stress and 12 degrees of freedom for the displacement. With a modest increase in the number of degrees of freedom (24 for the…
Physical experiments can characterize the elastic response of granular materials in terms of macroscopic state-variables, namely volume (packing) fraction and stress, while the microstructure is not accessible and thus neglected. Here, by…
Non-conductive materials like rubbers, plastics, ceramics, and even semiconductors have the property of flexoelectricity, which means that they can generate electricity when bent and twisted. However, an irregular shape or a peculiar load…
We probe the onset and effect of contact changes in 2D soft harmonic particle packings which are sheared quasistatically under controlled strain. First, we show that in the majority of cases, the first contact changes correspond to the…
In spite of the apparent similarity of micro-branching instabilities in different brittle materials, we propose that the physics determining the typical length- and time-scales characterizing the post-instability patterns differ greatly…
This study addresses the modelling of elastic bodies, particularly when the relaxed configuration is unknown or non-existent. We adopt the theory of initially stressed materials, incorporating the deformation gradient and stress state of…
In this Thesis we first show how the shape of the Peierls barrier and its dependence on the applied loading can be extracted from the data obtained in atomistic studies at 0 K. We consider the Peierls barrier as a two-dimensional periodic…
Bidisperse particle systems are common in both natural and engineered materials, and it is known to influence packing, flow, and stability. However, their direct effect on elastic properties, particularly in systems with attractive…