Related papers: Stylolites: A review
When stretched in one direction, most solids shrink in the transverse directions. In soft silicone gels, however, we observe that small-scale topographical features grow upon stretching. A quantitative analysis of the topography shows that…
Thousands of plant and animal species have been observed to have superhydrophobic surfaces that lead to various novel behaviors [1-5]. These observations have inspired attempts to create artificial superhydrophobic surfaces, given such…
The physical composition and structure of meteoroids gives us insight into the formation processes of their parent asteroids and comets. The strength of and fundamental grain sizes in meteoroids tell us about the environment in which small…
Under compressive stress, rock ``damage'' in the form of tensile microcracks is coupled to internal slip on microscopic interfaces, such as preexisting cracks and grain boundaries. In order to characterise the contribution of slip to the…
Particles whose shapes couple translation to rotation display a rich array of behaviors as they sediment at low Reynolds number. We introduce a unifying perspective in which the possible dynamical regimes and bifurcations between them can…
We study channelization and slope destabilization driven by subsurface (groundwater) flow in a laboratory experiment. The pressure of the water entering the sandpile from below as well as the slope of the sandpile are varied. We present…
A fascinating class of patterns, often encountered in nature as meandering cracks on rocks, dried-out fields and tectonic plates is produced by the fracture of solids. Here we report the observation and modeling of an unusual type of…
Porosity is one of the key properties of dense particle packings like sediment deposits and is influenced by a multitude of grain characteristics such as their size distribution and shape. In the present work, we focus on the form, a…
Accretion of mineralized thin wall-like structures via localized growth along their edges is observed in a range of physical and biological systems ranging from molluscan and brachiopod shells to carbonate-silica composite precipitates. To…
Shear rupture and fault slip in crystalline rocks like granite produce large dilation, impacting the spatiotemporal evolution of fluid pressure in the crust during the seismic cycle. To explore how fluid pressure variations are coupled to…
We propose an approach to measure surface elastic constants of soft solids. Generally, this requires one to probe interfacial mechanics at around the elastocapillary length scale, which is typically microscopic. Deformations of microscopic…
Failure and fault slip in crystalline rocks is associated with dilation. When pore fluids are present and drainage is insufficient, dilation leads to pore pressure drops, which in turn lead to strengthening of the material. We conducted…
Fluid-induced slip of fractures is characterized by strong multiphysics couplings. Three physical processes are considered: Flow, rock deformation and fracture deformation. The fractures are represented as lower-dimensional objects embedded…
An important strategy to stabilize emulsions is to arrest coalescence of the constituent droplets with an opposing rheological force. Colloidal particles adsorbed on the surface of emulsion droplets in a Pickering emulsion become…
Given recipe of qualitative, kinetic modelling by geometric methods of three-dimensional dendritic crystals. Characteristic features of the perturbations appearing on the surface of a spherical body, leading to different scenarios of the…
We study tribological granite-granite contacts as a model for tectonic faulting, combining experiments, theory, and molecular dynamics simulations. The high friction in this system is not dominated by particulate wear or plowing, as…
Surfaces eroded by ion-sputtering are sometimes observed to develop morphologies which are either ripple (periodic), or rough (non-periodic). We introduce a discrete stochastic model that allows us to interpret these experimental…
Fluidisation is the process by which the weight of a bed of particles is supported by a gas flow passing through it from below. When fluidised materials flow down an incline, the dynamics of the motion differ from their non-fluidised…
The complicated dynamics of the contact line of a moving droplet on a solid substrate often hamper the efficient modeling of microfluidic systems. In particular, the selection of the effective boundary conditions, specifying the contact…
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…