Related papers: Packing Transitions in the Elastogranular Confinem…
The packing of elastic bodies has emerged as a paradigm for the study of macroscopic disordered systems. However, progress is hampered by the lack of controlled experiments. Here we consider a model experiment for the isotropic…
A growing or compressed thin elastic sheet adhered to a rigid substrate can exhibit a buckling instability, forming an inward hump. Our study shows that the strip morphology depends on the delicate balance between the compression energy and…
When transported in confined geometries rigid fibers show interesting transport dynamics induced by friction with the top and bottom walls. Fiber flexibility causes an additional coupling between fiber deformation and transport and is…
Despite their considerable practical and biological applications, the link between molecular properties, assembly conditions and self-organized structure in confined polymer solutions remains elusive. Here, we explore the lyotropic nematic…
Grasping, in both biological and engineered mechanisms, can be highly sensitive to the gripper and object morphology, as well as perception, and motion planning. Here we circumvent the need for feedback or precise planning by using an array…
Many organisms exhibit branching morphologies that twist around each other and become entangled. Entanglement occurs when different objects interlock, creating complex and often irreversible configurations. This physical phenomenon is…
We study the scaling properties of forced folding of thin materials of different geometry. The scaling relations implying the topological crossovers from the folding of threedimensional plates to the folding of two-dimensional sheets, and…
The binding of proteins onto DNA contributes to the shaping and packaging of genome as well as to the expression of specific genetic messages. With a view to understanding the interplay between the presence of proteins and the deformation…
A buckled sheet offers a reservoir of material that can be unfurled at a later time. For sufficiently thin yet stiff materials, this geometric process has a striking mechanical feature: when the slack runs out, the material locks to further…
Soft colloids allow to explore high density states well beyond random close packing. An important open question is whether softness controls the dynamics under these dense conditions. While experimental works reported conflicting results,…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
The question of how stiff polymers are able to pack into small containers is particularly relevant to the study of DNA packaging in viruses. A reduced version of the problem based on coarse-grained representations of the main components of…
Surface roughness emerges naturally during mechanical removal of material, fracture, chemical deposition, plastic deformation, indentation, and other processes. Here, we use continuum simulations to show how roughness which is neither…
Amongst the various fascinating types of material behavior featured by magnetic gels and elastomers are magnetostrictive effects. That is, deformations in shape or changes in volume are induced from outside by external magnetic fields.…
The properties of the processes of deformation of a packing of rigid grains are analysed when the exact distribution of the normal forces at contacts is known. Importance of grain rotation and of counter-rotation of adjacent grains is…
Components manufactured via Wire + Arc Additive Manufacturing are usually characterised by large columnar grains. This can be mitigated by introducing in-process cold-rolling; in fact, the associated local plastic deformation leads to a…
3D Computer simulations and experiments are employed to study random packings of compressible spherical grains under external confining stress. Of particular interest is the rigid ball limit, which we describe as a continuous transition in…
The mechanical properties of biological materials are spatially heterogeneous. Typical tissues are made up of a spanning fibrous extracellular matrix in which various inclusions, such as living cells, are embedded. While the influence of…
Growing soft materials which follow a 3D path in space are critical to applications such as search and rescue and minimally invasive surgery. Here, we present a concept for a single-input growing multi-stable soft material, based on a…
Fractal patterns are observed in computational mechanics of elastic-plastic transitions in two models of linear elastic/perfectly-plastic random heterogeneous materials: (1) a composite made of locally isotropic grains with weak random…