Related papers: Crack formation and self-closing in shrinkable, gr…
We study the appearance and evolution of an array of parallel cracks in a thin slab of material that is directionally dried, and show that the cracks penetrate the material uniformly if the drying front is sufficiently sharp. We also show…
Polygonal desiccation crack patterns are commonly observed in natural systems. Despite their quotidian nature, it is unclear whether similar crack patterns which span orders of magnitude in length scales share the same underlying physics.…
Drying a droplet of colloidal dispersion can result in complex pattern formation due to both development and deformation of a skin at the drop surface. The present study focus on the drying process of droplets of colloidal dispersions in a…
Dry granular materials such as sand, gravel, pills, or agricultural grains, can become rigid when compressed or sheared. At low density, one can distort the shape of a container of granular material without encountering any resistance.…
Shells, when confined, can deform in a broad assortment of shapes and patterns, often quite dissimilar to what is produced by their flat counterparts (plates). In this work we discuss the morphological landscape of shells deposited on a…
Crack growth is the basic mechanism leading to the failure of brittle materials. Engineering addresses this problem within the framework of continuum mechanics, which links deterministically the crack motion to the applied loading. Such an…
We investigate the initiation of cracks in vertically freestanding water-saturated colloidal pillars constructed using a direct-write technique. Paradoxically, the cracks form during drying at the free end, far from the substrate, where the…
The role of plastic deformation in the high-pressure compaction of granular material is investigated using bonded particle model simulations. Grains are discretized into a set of computational particles connected by pairwise bonds. Bonds…
Granular materials, composed of discrete solid grains, can be modeled as simple mechanical systems. However, these materials can undergo spontaneous slow deformation, or creep, even under small forces and while in apparent mechanical…
A bonded particle model is used to explore how variations in the material properties of brittle, isotropic solids affect critical behavior in fragmentation. To control material properties, a new model is proposed which includes breakable…
Drying complex fluids is a common phenomenon where a liquid phase transforms into a dense or porous solid. This transformation involves several physical processes, such as the diffusion of liquid molecules into the surrounding atmosphere…
We investigate the geometry of two-dimensional polygonal cracking that forms on the air-exposed surface of dried starch slurries. Two different kinds of starches, made from potato and corn, exhibited distinguished crack evolution, and there…
Spontaneous stratification in granular mixtures has been recently reported by H. A. Makse et al. [Nature 386, 379 (1997)]. Here we study experimentally the dynamical processes leading to spontaneous stratification. Using a high-speed video…
The interplay between dilatancy and particle alignment in sheared granular materials composed of non-spherical particles leads to morphological inhomogeneity. Dilatancy, driven by interparticle friction, causes the packing to expand, while…
It is widely known that freezing breaks soft, wet materials. However, the mechanism underlying this damage is still not clear. To understand this process, we freeze model, brittle hydrogel samples, while observing the growth of ice-filled…
Cracking and peeling of a layer of clay on desiccation has been simulated using a spring model. A vertical section through the layer with finite thickness is represented by a rectangular array of nodes connected by linear springs on a…
Differential shrinkage in particulate quasi-brittle materials causes microcracking which reduces durability in these materials by increasing their mass transport properties. A hydro-mechanical three-dimensional periodic network approach was…
A model which accounts for cracking avalanches in piles of grains subject to external load is introduced and numerically simulated. The stress is stochastically transferred from higher layers to lower ones. Cracked areas exhibit various…
The resistance to fracture of reversible biopolymer hydrogels is an important control factor of the cutting/slicing and eating characteristics of food gels. It is also critical for their utilization in tissue engineering, for which…
During an earthquake, slip occurs in a localised shear zone that features a heavily granulated fault core that can be characterised as a shear band. We study the formation of this fault core in a granular rock such as sandstone by…