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The objective of developing bio-based composite sandwich structures with greener core materials is to facilitate the decarbonization of industries such as aviation and maritime. This field of research has received increasing attention over…
From biological tissues to layers of paint, macroscopic non-porous materials with the capacity to swell when brought in contact with an appropriate solvent are ubiquitous. Here, we study experimentally and theoretically one of the…
Biomaterials such as protein or polysaccharide gels are known to behave qualitatively as soft solids and to rupture under an external load. Combining optical and ultrasonic imaging to shear rheology we show that the failure scenario of a…
\emph{Spiroplasma} swimming is studied with a simple model based on resistive-force theory. Specifically, we consider a bacterium shaped in the form of a helix that propagates traveling-wave distortions which flip the handedness of the…
Using a combination of theory, experiments, and numerical simulations, we investigate the stability of coherent structures in a suspension of strongly aligned active swimmers. We show that a dilute jet of pullers undergoes a pearling…
Drops deposited on rough and hydrophobic surfaces can stay suspended with gas pockets underneath the liquid, then showing very low hydrodynamic resistance. When this superhydrophobic state breaks down, the subsequent wetting process can…
Wrinkling is commonly observed as mechanical instability when a stiff thin film bound on a compliant thick substrate undergoes in-plane compression exceeding a threshold. Despite significant efforts to create a broad range of surface…
Switchable hydrophilicity solvents (SHSs) are solvents defined by their ability to switch from their hydrophobic form to a hydrophilic form when put in contact with an acidic trigger such as $CO_2$. As a consequence, SHSs qualify as…
When swimming in close proximity, some microorganisms such as spermatozoa synchronize their flagella. Previous work on swimming sheets showed that such synchronization requires a geometrical asymmetry in the flagellar waveforms. Here we…
Understanding how water wets graphene is critical for predicting and controlling its behaviour in nanofluidic, sensing, and energy applications. A key measure of wetting is the contact angle made by a liquid droplet against the surface, yet…
Cracks in soft materials exhibit diverse dynamic patterns, involving straight, oscillation, branching, and supershear fracture. Here, we successfully reproduce these crack morphologies in a two-dimensional pre-strained fracture scenario and…
The hygro-mechanical behavior of a hierarchical cellular material, i.e. growth rings of softwood is investigated using a two-scale micro-mechanics model based on a computational homogenization technique. The lower scale considers the…
We perform linear stability analysis and nonlinear slender filament simulations of extensional necking in complex fluids and soft solids, during the stress relaxation process following an interrupted strain ramp. We start by deriving…
Thin elastic sheets bend easily, leading to mechanical instabilities such as wrinkling. Here, we investigate wrinkles at edges of bi-strips, which consist of two thin sheets, one that swells and one that does not, joined side-by-side. It is…
We fill a viscous liquid in a vertically stood cell of millimeter thickness, called the Hele-Shaw cell, and insert a disk in the liquid whose thickness is smaller than the cell thickness. The disk starts falling in the liquid due to gravity…
We investigate the wrinkling dynamics of a thin elastic sheet that is indented or compressed while floating on a viscous liquid. We show that the deformation speed controls the dynamics, leading to a wrinkle wavelength significantly smaller…
Biological materials exhibit complex structure-property relationships which are only beginning to be elucidated. Understanding the underlying physical mechanisms of the structure-property relationships is the key to designing bioinspired…
Blisters, delaminated regions that form in multilayered structures under compressive stresses, are observed across a wide range of length scales, from two-dimensional materials to protective coatings and laminated composites. Far from being…
From hydrogels and plastics to liquid crystals, soft solids cover a wide array of synthetic and biological materials that play key enabling roles in advanced technologies such as 3D printing, soft robotics, wearable electronics,…
We study a liquid film that is deposited onto a flat plate that is inclined at a constant angle to the horizontal and is extracted from a liquid bath at a constant speed. We additionally assume that there is a constant temperature gradient…