Related papers: Elasticity and Stability of Shape Changing Structu…
A rectangular plate of dielectric elastomer exhibiting gradients of material properties through its thickness will deform inhomogeneously when a potential difference is applied to compliant electrodes on its major surfaces, because each…
Curved elastic shells can be fabricated through molding or by harnessing residual stresses. These shells often exhibit snap-through behavior and multistability when loaded. We present a unique way of fabricating curved elastic shells that…
Necking instabilities, in which tensile (extensional) deformation localizes into a small spatial region, are generic failure modes in elasto-viscoplastic materials. Materials in this very broad class --- including amorphous, crystalline,…
An orthotropic metamaterial is composed of elements arrayed periodically in space. The element includes two cuboid structures. The first structure is the basic structure of the element, and the second structure is the transformation of the…
From the mitotic spindle up to tissues and biofilms, many biological systems behave as active droplets, which often break symmetry and change shape spontaneously. Here, I show that active nematic droplets can experience a fingering…
Wrinkling instabilities of thin elastic sheets can be used to generate periodic structures over a wide range of length scales. Viscosity of the thin elastic sheet or its surrounding medium has been shown to be responsible for dynamic…
Anelasticity, as an intrinsic property of amorphous solids, plays a significant role in understanding their relaxation and deformation mechanism. However, due to the lack of long-range order in amorphous solids, the structural origin of…
When tensioned, ordinary materials expand along the direction of the applied force. Here, we explore network concepts to design metamaterials exhibiting negative compressibility transitions, during which a material undergoes contraction…
Growth-induced instabilities are ubiquitous in biological systems and lead to diverse morphologies in the form of wrinkling, folding, and creasing. The current work focusses on the mechanics behind growth-induced wrinkling instabilities in…
The elastocapillary instability of a flexible plate plunged in a liquid bath is analysed theoretically. We show that the plate can bend due to two separate destabilizing mechanisms, when the liquid is partially wetting the solid. For…
The transformation method is a powerful tool for providing the constitutive parameters of the transformed material in the new coordinates. In transformation elasticity, a general curvilinear change of coordinates transforms conventional…
We study the origins of multiple mechanically stable states exhibited by an elastic shell comprising multiple conical frusta, a geometry common to reconfigurable corrugated structures such as `bendy straws'. This multistability is…
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…
Combinatorial mechanical metamaterials are made of anisotropic, flexible blocks, such that multiple metamaterials may be constructed using a single block type, and the system's response depends on the frustration (or its absence) due to the…
Mechanical densification of granular bodies is a process in which a loose material becomes increasingly cohesive as the applied pressure increases. A constitutive description of this process faces the formidable problem that granular and…
Review of selected fundamental topics on the interaction between phase transformations, fracture, and other structural changes in inelastic materials is presented. It mostly focuses on the concepts developed in the author's group over last…
The architecture of mechanical metamaterialsis designed to harness geometry, non-linearity and topology to obtain advanced functionalities such as shape morphing, programmability and one-way propagation. While a purely geometric framework…
Liquid crystal elastomers represent a novel class of programmable shape-transforming materials whose shape change trajectory is encoded in the material's nematic director field. Using three-dimensional nonlinear finite element…
Mathematical models of biological growth commonly attempt to distinguish deformation due to growth from that due to mechanical stresses through a hypothesised multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient. Here we demonstrate…
Numerous soft materials jam into an amorphous solid at high packing fraction. This non-equilibrium phase transition is best understood in the context of a model system in which particles repel elastically when they overlap. Recently,…