Related papers: Toughening in a nacre-like soft-hard layered struc…
In our previous paper (Eur. Phys. J. E 4, 121 (2001)) we proposed a coarse-grained elastic energy for nacre, or stratified structure of hard and soft layers. We then analyzed a crack running perpendicular to the layers and suggested one…
Materials that are strong, ultra-light weight and tough are in demand for a range of applications, requiring architectures and components carefully designed from the micrometer down to nanometer scales. Nacre-a structure found in many…
The combination of soft nanoscale organic components with inorganic nanograins hierarchically designed by natural organisms results in highly ductile structural materials that can withstand mechanical impact and exhibit high resilience on…
Nanolayered lamellae are common structures in nanoscience and nanotechnology, but most are nearly symmetric in layer thickness. Here, we report on the structure and mechanics of highly asymmetric and thermodynamically stable soft--hard…
Similar to nacre or brick-and-mortar structures, imbricated lamellar structures are widely found in natural and man-made materials and are of interest for biomimetics. These structures are known to be rather insensitive to defects and to…
We report numerical investigations of wave turbulence in a vibrating plate. The possibility to implement advanced measurement techniques and long time numerical simulations makes this system extremely valuable for wave turbulence studies.…
Engineering wear models are generally empirical and lack connections to the physical processes of debris generation at the nanoscale to microscale. Here, we thus analyze wear particle formation for sliding interfaces in dry contact with…
The staggered (or imbricated) lamellar "brick-and-mortar" nanostructure of nacre endows nacre with strength and fracture toughness values exceeding by an order of magnitude those of the constituents, and inspires the advent of new robust…
An analytical study is taken to investigate the relationship between material softening and structural softening through the use of a model problem in one dimension. With general nonlinear assumptions on the constitutive relations, it turns…
Glasses have numerous applications due to their exceptional transparency, however, poor fracture and impact resistance limit their applications as an engineering material. One relatively recent approach to improve the mechanical properties…
In layered materials, a common mode of deformation involves buckling of the layers under tensile deformation in the direction perpendicular to the layers. The instability mechanism, which operates in elastic materials from geological to…
The holographic duality has proven successful in linking seemingly unrelated problems in physics.Recently, intriguing correspondences between the physics of soft matter and gravity are emerging,including strong similarities between the…
We developed a physics-based analytical model to describe the nonlinear mechanical response of aspirated elastic shells. By representing the elastic energy through a stretching modulus, $K$, and a dimensionless ratio, $\delta$, capturing…
By virtue of being atomically thin, the electronic properties of heterostructures built from two-dimensional materials are strongly influenced by atomic relaxation. The atomic layers behave as flexible membranes rather than rigid crystals.…
Spider webs are incredible biological structures, comprising thin but strong silk filament and arranged into complex hierarchical architectures with striking mechanical properties (e.g., lightweight but high strength, achieving diverse…
Quasi-static strain-controlled measurements of stress vs strain curves in macroscopic amorphous solids result in a nonlinear looking curve that ends up either in mechanical collapse or in a steady-state with fluctuations around a mean…
Soft actuators are receiving increasing attention from the engineering community, not only in research but even for industrial applications. Among soft actuators, fibre-reinforced Bending Fluidic Actuators (BFAs) became very popular thanks…
A thin flat rectangular plate supported on its edges and subjected to in-plane loading exhibits stable post-buckling behaviour. However, the introduction of a nonlinear (softening) elastic foundation may cause the response to become…
Athermal models of disordered fibrous networks are highly useful for studying the mechanics of elastic networks composed of stiff biopolymers. The underlying network architecture is a key aspect that can affect the elastic properties of…
Live cells have ambiguous mechanical properties. They were often described as either elastic solids or viscoelastic fluids and have recently been classified as soft glassy materials characterized by weak power-law rheology. Nonlinear…