Related papers: Plasticity and Aging of Folded Elastic Sheets

Numerically simulating deformations in thin elastic sheets is a challenging problem in computational mechanics due to destabilizing compressive stresses that result in wrinkling. Determining the location, structure, and evolution of…

The growth of cracks combines materials science, fracture mechanics, and statistical physics. The importance of fluctuations in the crack velocity is fundamental since it signals that the crack overcomes local barriers such as tough spots…

Disordered mechanical systems can deform along a network of pathways that branch and recombine at special configurations called bifurcation points. Multiple pathways are accessible from these bifurcation points; consequently, computer-aided…

If one folds a thin viscoelastic sheet under an applied force, a line of plastic deformation is formed which shapes the sheet into an angle. We determine the parameters that define this angle experimentally and show that, no matter how much…

We study energy relaxation in a phenomenological model for polymer built from rheological considerations: a one dimensional nonlinear lattice with dissipative couplings. These couplings are well known in polymer's community to be possibly…

The mechanics of granular media at low liquid saturation levels remain poorly understood. Macroscopic mechanical properties are affected by microscale forces and processes, such as capillary forces, inter-particle friction, liquid flows,…

Flow in soft materials encompasses a wide range of viscous, plastic and elastic phenomena which provide challenges to modelling at the microscopic level. To create a controlled flow, we perform falling ball viscometry tests on packings of…

By means of the isoconfigurational method we calculate the change in the propensity for motion that the structure of a glass-forming system experiences during its relaxation dynamics. The relaxation of such a system has been demonstrated to…

Low-energy excitations play a key role in all condensed-matter systems, yet there is limited understanding of their nature in glasses, where they correspond to local rearrangements of groups of particles. Here we introduce an algorithm to…

We study creep flow and yielding of particulate depletion gels under constant shear stress, combining data on different length and time scales. We characterise the breakage of meso-scale strands in the gel. Breakage events are distributed…

A fundamental challenge for disordered solids is predicting macroscopic yield from the microscopic arrangements of constituent particles. Yield is accompanied by a sudden and large increase in energy dissipation due to the onset of plastic…

We develop a framework to understand the mechanics of metamaterial sheets on curved surfaces. Here we have constructed a continuum elastic theory of mechanical metamaterials by introducing an auxiliary, scalar gauge-like field that absorbs…

We study the creep behavior of a disordered brittle material (concrete) under successive loading steps, using acoustic emission and ultrasonic sensing to track internal damage. The primary creep rate is observed to follow a (Omori-type)…

The processing of thin-structured materials in a fluidic environment, from nearly inextensible but flexible graphene sheets to highly extensible polymer films, arises in many applications. So far, little is known about the dynamics of such…

Fatigue and aging of materials are, in large part, determined by the evolution of the atomic-scale structure in response to strains and perturbations. This coupling between microscopic structure and long time scales remains one of the main…

Clay, the major ingredient of natural soils, is often used as a rheological modifier while formulating paints and coatings. When subjected to desiccation, colloidal clay suspensions and clayey soils crack due to the accumulation of…

We investigate the weakening of elastic materials through randomly distributed circles and cracks numerically and compare the results to predictions from homogenization theories. We find a good agreement for the case of randomly oriented…

This study examines the roughness of mechanically cleaved edges in 2D crystals and glasses using molecular dynamics simulations with chemically accurate machine-learning force fields. Our results show that ultra-flat armchair and zigzag…

We present our recent study on rough adhesive contacts of viscoelastic materials in steady-state sliding, focusing on the interplay between adhesion and viscoelasticity by means of a novel energy approach. We investigate tribological…

The consolidation of suspended particulate matter under external forces such as pressure or gravity is of widespread interest. In this work, we derive a constitutive relation to describe the deformation of a {\it two-dimensional} strongly…