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Kirigami tessellations, regular planar patterns formed by cutting flat, thin sheets, have attracted recent scientific interest for their rich geometries, surprising material properties and promise for technologies. Here we pose and solve…
A polymer network can imbibe water, forming an aggregate called hydrogel, and undergo large and inhomogeneous deformation with external mechanical constraint. Due to the large deformation, nonlinearity plays a crucial role, which also…
Designing reconfigurable materials based on deformable nanoparticles (NPs) hinges on an understanding of the energetically-favored shapes these NPs can adopt. Using simulations, we show that hollow, deformable patchy NPs tailored with…
We develop an automated computational modeling framework for rapid gradient-based design of multistable soft mechanical structures composed of non-identical bistable unit cells with appropriate geometric parameterization. This framework…
We study pattern formation during tensile deformation of confined viscoelastic layers. The use of a model system (PDMS with different degrees of crosslinking) allows us to go continuously from a viscous liquid to an elastic solid. We…
Can active forces be exploited to drive the consistent collapse of an active polymer into a folded structure? In this paper we introduce and perform numerical simulations of a simple model of active colloidal folders, and show that a…
A shape sensitive, variational approach for the matching of surfaces considered as thin elastic shells is investigated. The elasticity functional to be minimized takes into account two different types of nonlinear energies: a membrane…
Self-assembling novel ordered structures with nanoparticles has recently received much attention. Here we use computer simulations to study a two-dimensional model system characterized by a simple isotropic interaction that could be…
It is of interest to fabricate curved surfaces in three dimensions from easily available homogeneous material in the form of flat sheets. The aim is not just to obtain a surface $M$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$ which has a desired intrinsic Riemannian…
Elucidating versatile configurations of spiral folding, and investigating the deployment performance is of relevant interest to extend the applicability of deployable membranes towards large-scale and functional configurations. In this…
Confined thin structures are ubiquitous in nature. Spatial and length constraints have led to a number of novel packing strategies at both the micro-scale, as when DNA packages inside a capsid, and the macro-scale, seen in plant root…
Knitting turns yarn, a 1D material, into a 2D fabric that is flexible, durable [1], and can be patterned to adopt a wide range of 3D geometries [2]. Like other mechanical metamaterials [3], the elasticity of knitted fabrics is an emergent…
Nonlinear elastic metamaterials are known to support a variety of dynamic phenomena that enhance our capacity to manipulate elastic waves. Since these properties stem from complex, subwavelength geometry, full-scale dynamic simulations are…
Modeling folding surfaces with nonzero thickness is of practical interest for mechanical engineering. There are many existing approaches that account for material thickness in folding applications. We propose a new systematic and broadly…
Astrophysical fluids under the influence of magnetic fields are often subjected to single-fluid or two-fluid approximations. In the case of weakly ionized plasmas however, this can be inappropriate due to distinct responses from the…
Numerical modeling of strength and non-destructive testing of complex structures such as buildings, space rockets or oil reservoirs often involves calculations on extremely large grids. The modeling of elastic wave processes in solids…
We consider the task of building compact deep learning pipelines suitable for deployment on storage and power constrained mobile devices. We propose a unified framework to learn a broad family of structured parameter matrices that are…
Doubly curved thin concrete shells are very efficient building structures, suitable for light-weight construction because of their high structural stability. In the process of constructing such shells, an efficient innovative flexible…
We create mechanical metamaterials whose response to uniaxial compression can be programmed by lateral confinement, allowing monotonic, non-monotonic and hysteretic behavior. These functionalities arise from a broken rotational symmetry…
Pattern-forming metamaterials feature microstructures specifically designed to change the material's macroscopic properties due to internal instabilities. These can be triggered either by mechanical deformation or, in the case of active…