Related papers: Competition between delamination and fracture in m…
We investigate the process of the slow unrolling of a roll of typical pressure-sensitive adhesive, Scotch tape, under its own weight. Probing the peeling velocities down to nm/s resolution, which is three orders of magnitudes lower than…
The mechanics of adherent sheets is central to applications ranging from patching a band aid, coating technology, to the breakthrough discovery of peeling graphene flakes using sticky tape. These processes are often hindered by the…
The mechanics of single-chain stretching and rupture are central to understanding the resilience of biological polymers and designing strong and tough soft materials such as double-network gels and multi-network elastomers. In this work, we…
For various engineering and industrial applications it is desirable to realize mechanical systems with broadly adjustable elasticity to respond flexibly to the external environment. Here we discover a topology-correlated transition between…
Biomimetic membranes in contact with a planar substrate or a second membrane are studied theoretically. The membranes contain specific adhesion molecules (stickers) which are attracted by the second surface. In the absence of stickers, the…
An adhesive unilateral contact between visco-elastic bodies at small strains and in a Kelvin-Voigt rheology is scrutinized, neglecting inertia. The flow-rule for debonding the adhesive is considered rate independent, unidirectional, and…
Inspired by active shape morphing in developing tissues and biomaterials, we investigate two generic mechanochemical models where the deformations of a thin elastic sheet are driven by, and in turn affect, the concentration gradients of a…
A micrometer-scale elastic shell immersed in a nematic liquid crystal may be deformed by the host if the cost of deformation is comparable to the cost of elastic deformation of the nematic. Moreover, such inclusions interact and form chains…
Indentation is a common experimental technique to study the mechanics of polymeric materials. The main advantage of using indentation is because this provides a direct correlation between the microstructure and the small-scale mechanical…
The dynamics of a "peeling front" or an elastic line is studied under creep (constant load) conditions. Our experiments show an exponential dependence of the creep velocity on the inverse force (mass) applied. In particular, the dynamical…
Multi-material lightweight designs, e.g. the combination of aluminum with fiber-reinforced composites, are a key feature for the development of innovative and resource-efficient products. The connection properties of such bi-material…
Peeling, shearing, and sliding are important mechanical phenomena in van der Waals solids. However, theoretically they have been studied mostly using minimal periodic cells and in the context of accurate quantum simulations. Here, we…
We propose a new conceptual approach to reach unattained dissipative properties based on the friction of slender concentric sliding columns. We begin by searching for the optimal topology in the simplest telescopic system of two concentric…
Strength, ductility, and failure properties of metals are tailored by plastic deformation routes. Predicting these properties requires modeling of the structural dynamics and stress evolution taking place on several length scales. Progress…
A model system has been recently developed to study adhesion. It consists of a giant lipid bilayer vesicle with reconstituted lipo-polymers (repellers) as well as with lipo-ligands recognized by receptors covering the substrate. Adhesion in…
The slow motion of a crack line is studied via an experiment in which sheets of paper are split into two halves in a ``peel-in-nip'' (PIN) geometry under a constant load, in creep. The velocity-force relation is exponential. The dynamics of…
We consider a model predictive control (MPC) setting, where we use the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to exploit problem structure. We take advantage of interacting components in the controlled system by decomposing its…
The wide adoption of thermoplastic composites to reduce weight in structural parts requires reliable numerical methods to account for debonding between overmolded parts. Although cohesive elements are effective for debonding, the need for…
We investigate the role of architected thin films in the interfacial failure properties of bi-layer composites. Our results show that, while graded structures can be used to prescribe failure at the interface, they do not offer significant…
It is well-known that there exist bar-joint frameworks (without continuous flexions) whose physical models can snap between different realizations due to non-destructive elastic deformations of material. We present a method to measure these…