Related papers: Capillary control of collapse in soft composite co…
Liquid crystal elastomers are rubber-like solids with liquid crystalline mesogens (stiff, rod-like molecules) incorporated either into the main chain or as a side chain of the polymer. These solids display a range of unusual…
Using numerical simulations, we investigate the gravitational evolution of filamentary molecular cloud structures and their condensation into dense protostellar cores. One possible process is the so called 'edge effect', the pile-up of…
Soft solids with tunable mechanical response are at the core of new material technologies, but a crucial limit for applications is their progressive aging over time, which dramatically affects their functionalities. The generally accepted…
We report experiments on the deformation and transport of an elastic fiber in a viscous cellular flow, namely a lattice of counter-rotative vortices. We show that the fiber can buckle when approaching a stagnation point. By tuning either…
Motivated by recent experimental observations of capillary-induced spooling of fibers inside droplets both in spider capture silk and in synthetic systems, we investigate the behavior of a fiber packed in a drop. Using a simplified 2D…
We study the buckling of elastic spherical shells under osmotic pressure with the osmolyte concentration of the exterior solution as control parameter. We compare our results for the bifurcation behavior with results for buckling under…
We consider the (barotropic) Euler system describing the motion of a compressible inviscid fluid driven by a stochastic forcing. Adapting the method of convex integration we show that the initial value problem is ill-posed in the class of…
We investigate the physics of an optically-driven micromotor of biological origin. A single, live red blood cell, when placed in an optical trap folds into a rod-like shape. If the trapping laser beam is circularly polarized, the folded RBC…
The application of pure torsion to a long and thin cylindrical rod is known to provoke a twisting instability, evolving from an initial kink to a knot. In the torsional parallel-plate rheometry of stubby cylinders, the geometrical…
An analytical model based on variational principles for a thin-walled stiffened plate subjected to axial compression is presented. A system of nonlinear differential and integral equations is derived and solved using numerical continuation.…
We provide an extension to previous analysis of the localised beading instability of soft slender tubes under surface tension and axial stretching. The primary questions pondered here are: under what loading conditions, if any, can…
Although coveted in applications, few materials expand when subject to compression or contract under decompression, i.e., exhibit the negative compressibility phenomenon. A key step to achieve such counterintuitive behaviour is the…
Cold compaction of ceramic powders is driven by plastic strain, during which the elastic stiffness of the material progressively increases from values typical of granular matter to those representative of a fully dense solid. This increase…
We study the mechanical buckling of a two dimensional membrane coated with a thin layer of superfluid. It is seen that a singularity (vortex or anti-vortex defect) in the phase of the quantum order parameter, distorts the membrane metric…
Various materials are made of long thin fibers that are randomly oriented to form a complex network in which drops of wetting liquid tend to accumulate at the nodes. The capillary force exerted by the liquid can bend flexible fibers, which…
Two classes of non-linear elastic materials are derived via two-dimensional homogenization. These materials are equivalent to a periodic grid of axially-deformable and axially-preloaded structural elements, subject to incremental…
Natural materials often feature a combination of soft and stiff phases, arranged to achieve excellent mechanical properties, such as high strength and toughness. Many natural materials have even independently evolved to have similar…
Using numerical simulations, we characterized the behavior of an elastic membrane immersed in an active fluid. Our findings reveal a nontrivial folding and re-expansion of the membrane that is controlled by the interplay of its resistance…
Homogenization of the incremental response of grids made up of preloaded elastic rods leads to homogeneous effective continua which may suffer macroscopic instability, occurring at the same time in both the grid and the effective continuum.…
The capillary-induced structural instability of an elastic circular tube partially filled by a liquid is studied by combining theoretical analysis and molecular dynamics simulations. The analysis shows that, associated with the instability,…