Related papers: Packing Transitions in the Elastogranular Confinem…
Many clays, soils, biological tissues, foods, and coatings are shrinkable, granular materials: they are composed of packed, hydrated grains that shrink when dried. In many cases, these packings crack during drying, critically hindering…
We report on experiments to measure the temporal and spatial evolution of packing arrangements of anisotropic, cylindrical granular material, using high-resolution capacitive monitoring. In these experiments, the particle configurations…
Fine scale elastic structures are widespread in nature, for instances in plants or bones, whenever stiffness and low weight are required. These patterns frequently refine towards a Dirichlet boundary to ensure an effective load transfer.…
Tip-driven growth processes underlie the development of many plants. To date, tip-driven growth processes have been modelled as an elongating path or series of segments without taking into account lateral expansion during elongation.…
Spatially confined rigid membranes reorganize their morphology in response to the imposed constraints. A crumpled elastic sheet presents a complex pattern of random folds focusing the deformation energy while compressing a membrane resting…
Mobility properties inside and around degenerate domains of an elastic lattice partially pinned on a square array of traps are explored by means of a fully controllable model system of macroscopic particles. We focus on the different…
We suggest a geometrical mechanism for the ordering of slender filaments inside non-isotropic containers, using cortical microtubules in plant cells and packing of viral genetic material inside capsids as concrete examples. We show…
We measure experimentally the rearrangements due to a small localized cyclic displacement applied to a packing of rigid grains under gravity in a 2D geometry. We analyze the evolution of the response to this perturbation by considering the…
Rigid particles pack into structures, such as sand dunes on the beach, whose overall stability is determined by the average number of contacts between particles. However, when packing spatially extended objects with flexible shapes,…
Macroscopic elastic core-shell systems can be generated as toy models to be deformed and haptically studied by hand. On the mesoscale, colloidal core-shell particles and microgels are fabricated and investigated by different types of…
The shape assumed by a slender elastic structure is a function both of the geometry of the space in which it exists and the forces it experiences. We explore by experiments and theoretical analysis, the morphological phase-space of a…
Tubular crystals, two-dimensional lattices wrapped into cylindrical topologies, arise in many contexts, including botany and biofilaments, and in physical systems such as carbon nanotubes. The geometrical principles of botanical…
Granular packings display a wealth of mechanical features which are of widespread significance. One of these features is creep: the slow deformation under applied stress. Creep is common for many other amorphous materials such as many…
Many biological tissues feature a heterogeneous network of fibers whose tensile and bending rigidity contribute substantially to these tissues' elastic properties. Rigidity percolation has emerged as a important paradigm for relating these…
Volume alteration in solid materials is a common cause of material failure. Here we investigate the crack formation in thin elastic layers attached to a substrate. We show that small variations in the volume contraction and substrate…
Granular crystallisation is an important phenomenon whereby ordered packing structures form in granular matter under vibration. However, compared with the well-developed principles of crystallisation at the atomic scale, crystallisation in…
Experiments on isotropic compression of a granular assembly of spheres show that the shear and bulk moduli vary with the confining pressure faster than the 1/3 power law predicted by Hertz-Mindlin effective medium theories (EMT) of contact…
Packing under confinement could generate rich ordered structures through entropic effects, which is a fundamental problem in condensed matter, biophysics and material science. The influence of confinement to the anisotropic hard…
Soft porous materials, such as biological tissues and soils, are exposed to periodic deformations in a variety of natural and industrial contexts. The detailed flow and mechanics of these deformations have not yet been systematically…
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…