Related papers: Giant deformations and soft-inflation in LCE ballo…
In this paper, we present a 2D numerical model developed to simulate the dynamics of soft, deformable particles. To accommodate significant particle deformations, the particle surface is represented as a narrow shell composed of mass points…
Cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers have interesting and potentially very useful photonic properties. In an ideal monodomain configuration of these materials, one finds a Bragg-reflection of light in a narrow wavelength range and a…
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…
Machines designed for operation in Space, as well as other extreme environments, need to be both resilient and adaptable when mission parameters change. Soft robots offer advantages in adaptability, but most lack resilience to the pressure…
When a flexible plate is peeled off a thin and soft elastic film bonded to a rigid support, uniformly spaced fingering patterns develop along their line of contact. While, the wavelength of these patterns depends only on the thickness of…
After a short review on the physics of pulled threads and their mechanical properties, the paper reports and discusses on the strand elongation of disordered columnar phases, hexagonal or lamello-columnar, of small molecules or polymers.…
The elastocaloric effect (ECE) is a thermodynamic quantity relating changes in entropy to changes in strain experienced by a material. As such, ECE measurements can provide valuable information about the entropy landscape proximate to…
Flexible mechanical metamaterials are compliant structures engineered to achieve unique properties via the large deformation of their components. While their static character has been studied extensively, the study of their dynamic…
Using Monte Carlo simulations, we study the properties of an elastic triangular lattice subject to a random background potential. As the cooling rate is reduced, we observe a rather sudden crossover between two different glass phases, one…
We study numerically how multiple deformable capsules squeeze into a constriction. This situation is largely encountered in microfluidic chips designed to manipulate living cells, which are soft entities. We use fully three-dimensional…
For nearly a century, introduction of nanoparticles to elastomers has yielded extraordinarily tough nanocomposites that are critical to technologies from actuators to tires. The mechanisms by which this reinforcement occurs have…
Nematic elastomers and glasses are solids that display spontaneous distortion under external stimuli. Recent advances in the synthesis of sheets with controlled heterogeneities have enabled their actuation into non-trivial shapes with…
We provide a clear energetic insight into the catastrophic nature of the so-called creasing and pull-in instabilities in soft electro-active elastomers. These phenomena are ubiquitous for thin electro-elastic plates and are a major obstacle…
Soft robotics has emerged as a promising technology that holds great potential for various application areas. This is due to soft materials unique properties, including flexibility, safety, and shock absorption, among others. Despite many…
Surface tension at cavity walls can play havoc with the mechanical properties of perforated soft solids when the cavities are filled with a fluid. This study is an investigation of the macroscopic elastic properties of elastomers embedding…
Bubbles in complex fluids are often desirable, and sometimes simply inevitable, in the processing of formulated products. Bubbles can rise by buoyancy, grow or dissolve by mass transfer, and readily respond to changes in pressure, thereby…
Liquid metals (LM) are embedded in an elastomer matrix to obtain soft composites with unique thermal, dielectric, and mechanical properties. They have applications in soft robotics, biomedical engineering, and wearable electronics. By…
The mechanisms of void growth and coalescence are key contributors to the ductile failure of crystalline materials. At the grain scale, single crystal plastic anisotropy induces large strain localization leading to complex shape evolutions.…
We demonstrate experimentally the existence of a purely elastic fingering instability which arises when air penetrates into an elastomer confined in a Hele-Shaw cell. Fingers appear sequentially and propagate within the bulk of the material…
Nematic liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) have anomalously high vibration damping, and it has been assumed this is the cause of their anomalously high pressure-sensitive adhesion (PSA). Here we investigate the mechanism behind this enhanced…