Related papers: Cutting and slicing weak solids
Droplets splash when they impact dry, flat substrates above a critical velocity that depends on parameters such as droplet size, viscosity and air pressure. By imaging ethanol drops impacting silicone gels of different stiffnesses we show…
Surface stresses have recently emerged as a key player in the mechanics of highly compliant solids. The classic theories of contact mechanics describe adhesion with a compliant substrate as a competition between surface energies driving…
Three general modes are distinguished in the deformation of a thin shell; these are stretching, drilling, and bending. Of these, the drilling mode is the one more likely to emerge in a soft matter shell (as compared to a hard, structural…
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…
We show that energy dissipation partition between a liquid and a solid controls the shape and stability of droplets sliding on viscoelastic gels. When both phases dissipate energy equally, droplet dynamics is similar to that on rigid…
The formation of periodic wrinkles in soft layered materials due to mechanical instabilities is prevalent in nature and has been proposed for use in multiple applications. However, such phenomena have been explored predominantly in…
When stretched in one direction, most solids shrink in the transverse directions. In soft silicone gels, however, we observe that small-scale topographical features grow upon stretching. A quantitative analysis of the topography shows that…
When a gel absorbs solvent from surrounding, stress field is created in the gel, and this causes complex dynamics of the swelling behavior. Here we study this effect for disk-shaped gel by rigorously solving the diffusio-mechanical coupling…
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…
In medicolegal situations, the consequences of a stabbing incident are described in terms that are qualitative without being quantitative. Here, the mechanical variables involved in knife-tissue penetration events are used to determine the…
The present work investigates the normal and tangential peeling behaviour of a gecko spatula using a coupled adhesion-friction model. The objective is to explain the strong attachment and easy detachment behaviour of the spatulae as well as…
Cutting onions often leads to tear-inducing aerosol release in kitchen, yet the underlying mechanics of droplet generation remain poorly understood. In this work, we combine custom-developed high-speed particle tracking velocimetry (PTV)…
A deterministic theory describing the behavior of an ultrathin lubricant film between two atomically-smooth solid surfaces is proposed. For the description of lubricant state the parameter of excess volume arising due to chaotization of…
Cavitation is a common damage mechanism in soft solids. Here, we study this using a phase-separation technique in stretched, elastic solids to controllably nucleate and grow small cavities by several orders of magnitude. The ability to make…
What characterises a solid is its way to respond to external stresses. Ordered solids, such crystals, display an elastic regime followed by a plastic one, both well understood microscopically in terms of lattice distortion and dislocations.…
We do extensive simulations of a simple model of shear-driven jamming in two dimensions to analyze the velocity distribution at different densities $\phi$ around the jamming density $\phi_J$ and at different low shear strain rates,…
Simple homogeneous shear flows of frictionless, deformable particles are studied by particle simulations at large shear rates and for differently soft, deformable particles. The particle stiffness sets a time-scale that can be used to scale…
Soft materials are ubiquitous in technological applications that require deformability, for instance, in flexible, water-repellent coatings. However, the wetting properties of pre-strained soft materials are only beginning to be explored.…
Amorphous solids tend to present an abundance of soft elastic modes, which diminish their transport properties, generate heterogeneities in their elastic response, and affect non-linear processes like thermal activation of plasticity. This…
A simple model for solid friction is analyzed. It is based on tangential springs representing interlocked asperities of the surfaces in contact. Each spring is given a maximal strain according to a probability distribution. At their maximal…