Related papers: Crumpling an elasto-plastic thin sphere

Curvature and mechanics are intimately connected for thin materials, and this coupling between geometry and physical properties is readily seen in folded structures from intestinal villi and pollen grains, to wrinkled membranes and…

Outflow of granular materials from silos is a remarkably complex physical phenomenon that has been extensively studied with simple objects like monodisperse hard disks in two dimensions (2D) and hard spheres in 2D and 3D. For those…

We report numerical simulations of strongly vibrated granular materials designed to mimic recent experiments performed both in presence [1] or absence [2] of gravity. We show that a model with impact velocity dependent restitution…

Spontaneous material shape changes, such as swelling, growth or thermal expansion, can be used to trigger dramatic elastic instabilities in thin shells. These instabilities originate in geometric incompatibility between the preferred…

Randomly crumpled sheets have shape memory. In order to understand the basis of this form of memory, we simulate triangular lattices of springs whose lengths are altered to create a topography with multiple potential energy minima. We then…

Simulations of the structure and dynamics of fluid films confined to a thickness of a few molecular diameters are described. Confining walls introduce layering and in-plane order in the adjacent fluid. The latter is essential to transfer of…

Soft-granular media, such as dense emulsions, foams or tissues, exhibit either fluid- or solid-like properties depending on the applied external stresses. Whereas bulk rheology of such materials has been thoroughly investigated, the…

We consider a ubiquitous scenario where a fluctuating, semipermeable vesicle is embedded in solution while enclosing a fixed number of solute particles. The swelling with increasing number of particles or decreasing concentration of the…

Ever since the discovery of graphene and subsequent explosion of interest in single atom thick materials, studying their mechanical properties has been an active area of research. New length scales often necessitate a rethinking of physical…

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…

A variational framework is introduced to describe how a surface bends when it is subject to local constraints on its geometry. This framework is applied to describe the patterns of a folded sheet of paper. The unstretchability of paper…

A beer bottle or soda can on a table, when slightly tipped and released, falls to an upright position and then rocks up to a somewhat opposite tilt. Superficially this rocking motion involves a collision when the flat circular base of the…

This paper addresses testing of compressed structures, such as shells, that exhibit catastrophic buckling and notorious imperfection sensitivity. The central concept is the probing of a loaded structural specimen by a controlled lateral…

Solids deform and fluids flow, but soft glassy materials, such as emulsions, foams, suspensions, and pastes, exhibit an intricate mix of solid and liquid-like behavior. While much progress has been made to understand their elastic (small…

The irregularity of particle motions during quasi-static deformation is investigated using discrete element (DEM) simulations of sphere and sphere-cluster assemblies. A total of three types of interparticle movements are analyzed: relative…

Motivated by recent experiments, we consider theoretically the compression of droplets pinned at the bottom on a surface of finite area. We show that if the droplet is sufficiently compressed at the top by a surface, it will always develop…

The static friction between crystalline surfaces separated by a molecularly thin layer of adsorbed molecules is calculated using molecular dynamics simulations. These molecules naturally lead to a finite static friction that is consistent…

When a thin elastic sheet crumples, the elastic energy condenses into a network of folding lines and point vertices. These folds and vertices have elastic energy densities much greater than the surrounding areas, and most of the work…

A scroll wave in a sufficiently thin layer of an excitable medium with negative filament tension can be stable nevertheless due to filament rigidity. Above a certain critical thickness of the medium, such scroll wave will have a tendency to…

We report surface hardening or crust formation, unlike caking, during drying when a confined porous medium was heated from above using IR radiation. These crusts have higher strength than their closest counterparts such as sandcastles and…