Related papers: Rigidity-Controlled Crossover: From Spinodal to Cr…
We investigate numerically the transition between static equilibrium and dynamic surface flow of a 2D cohesionless granular system driven by a continuous gravity loading. This transition is characterized by intermittent local dynamic…
Starting from a commensurate triangular thin solid strip, confined within two hard structureless walls, a stretch along its length introduces a rectangular distortion. Beyond a critical strain the solid fails through nucleation of…
Anomalous behavior of water in superooled region (namely decrease of density and sharp increase of response functions at atmospheric pressure) are manly associated with either existence of liquid-liquid criticality or re-entering…
Primary instability of the lid-driven flow in a cube is studied by a comprehensive linear stability approach. Two cases, in which the lid moves parallel to the cube sidewall or parallel to the diagonal plane, are considered. The SIMPLE…
Can the concept of self-organized criticality, exemplified by models such as the sandpile model, be described within the framework of continuous phase transitions? In this paper, we provide extensive numerical evidence supporting an…
We address the question of why larger, high symmetry crystals are mostly weak, ductile and statistically sub-critical, while smaller crystals with the same symmetry are strong, brittle and super-critical. We link it to another question of…
The deformation of brittle material is primarily accompanied by micro-cracking and faulting. However, it has often been found that continuum fluid models, usually based on a non-Newtonian viscosity, are applicable. To explain this rheology,…
Using video microscopy, we measure local spatial constraints in disordered binary colloidal samples, ranging from dilute fluids to jammed glasses, and probe their spatial and temporal correlations to local dynamics during the glass…
We investigate the structure and equilibrium linear-response dynamics of suspensions of hard colloidal dumbbells using Brownian Dynamics computer simulations. The focus lies on the dense fluid and plastic crystal states of the colloids with…
We study the behavior of fracture in disordered systems close to the breakdown point. We simulate numerically both scalar (resistor network) and vectorial (spring network) models with threshold disorder, driven at constant current and…
We present a comprehensive discussion of a transition from integrability to non-integrability in an oval billiard with a static boundary. This transition is controlled by a deformation parameter $\epsilon$, which modifies the boundary shape…
Prediction of breakdown in disordered solids under external loading in a question of paramount importance. Here we use a fiber bundle model for disordered solids and record the time series of the avalanche sizes and energy bursts. The time…
This work considers the transition to unsteadiness in the wake of 2D slender bodies, and questions the relevance of the generally accepted scenario involving a region of absolute instability within the near wake. The case of a thin plate at…
Modelling fluid turbulence using a `skeleton' of coherent structures has traditionally progressed by focusing on a few canonical laboratory experiments such as pipe flow and Taylor-Couette flow. We here consider the stratified inclined…
Scale invariance is a central organizing principle in physics, underlying phenomena that range from critical behaviour in statistical mechanics to transport and chaos in nonlinear dynamical systems. Here we present a unified and physically…
We show that the intermittent and self-similar fluctuations displayed by a slow crack during the propagation in a heterogeneous medium can be quantitatively described by an extension of a classical statistical model for fracture. The model…
We find an order-disorder transition from crystals to disordered crystals for static packings of frictionless spheres. While the geometric indicators are mostly blind to the transition, disordered crystals already exhibit properties apart…
Talk presented at the International Conference on Mathematical Physics (Brisbane 1997). This is an introduction to recent work on the scaling and intermittency in forced Burgers turbulence. The mapping between Burgers' equation and the…
We study the creep rupture of bundles of viscoelastic fibers occurring under uniaxial constant tensile loading. A novel fiber bundle model is introduced which combines the viscoelastic constitutive behaviour and the strain controlled…
Even the most regular stick-slip frictional sliding is always stochastic, with irregularity in both the intervals between slip events and the sizes of the associated stress drops. Applying small-amplitude oscillations to the shear force, we…