Related papers: Gel rupture in a dynamic environment
Biomaterials such as protein or polysaccharide gels are known to behave qualitatively as soft solids and to rupture under an external load. Combining optical and ultrasonic imaging to shear rheology we show that the failure scenario of a…
Hydrogels have the ability to undergo large deformations and yet fail like brittle materials. The development of biocompatible hydrogels with high strength and toughness is an ongoing challenge in many applications. We crosslinked bovine…
Hydrogels are attractive and versatile gel-based structures consisting of three-dimensional networks of hydrophilic polymers with unique properties that can retain a large amount of water and be tailor-designed according to specific…
Widespread processes in nature and technology are governed by the dynamical transition whereby a material in an initially solid-like state then yields plastically. Major unresolved questions concern whether any material will yield smoothly…
This study employs molecular dynamics simulations to investigate droplet dynamics when a stationary droplet on a solid surface is struck by another droplet of similar size from above. The focus is on the jumping behavior of the merged…
Stress enhancement in the vicinity of brittle cracks makes the macro-scale failure properties extremely sensitive to the micro-scale material disorder. Therefore: (i) Fracturing systems often display a jerky dynamics, so-called crackling…
We conduct systematic experiments to investigate the dynamics of liquid jet breakup and the resulting droplet size distribution, emphasizing the influence of liquid jet velocity and needle exit diameter. We precisely control jet formation…
Active gels play an important role in biology and in inspiring biomimetic active materials, due to their ability to change shape, size and create their own morphology; the relevant mechanics behind these changes is driven by…
The phase field fracture method has emerged as a promising computational tool for modelling a variety of problems including, since recently, hydrogen embrittlement and stress corrosion cracking. In this work, we demonstrate the potential of…
Plastic deformation of heterogeneous solid structures is often characterized by random intermittent local plastic events. On the mesoscale this feature can be represented by a spatially fluctuating local yield threshold. Here we study the…
Colloidal gels are out-of-equilibrium structures, made up of a rarefied network of colloidal particles. Comparing experiments to numerical simulations, with hydrodynamic interactions switched off, we demonstrate the crucial role of the…
The width of fracture process zones in geomaterials is commonly assumed to depend on the type of heterogeneity of the material. Still, very few techniques exist, which link the type of heterogeneity to the width of the fracture process…
The mechanical response, serviceability, and load bearing capacity of materials and structural components can be adversely affected due to external stimuli, which include exposure to a corrosive chemical species, high temperatures,…
We investigate dynamical heterogeneities in the collective relaxation of a concentrated microgel system, for which the packing fraction can be conveniently varied by changing the temperature. The packing fraction dependent mechanical…
Colloidal gels are elasto-plastic materials composed of an out-of-equilibrium, self-assembled network of micron-sized (solid) particles suspended in a fluid. Recent work has shown that far-field hydrodynamic interactions do not change gel…
We have developed a new multiscale simulation technique to investigate history-dependent flow behavior of entangled polymer melt, using a smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation with microscopic simulators that account for the dynamics…
Liquid wetting of a surface is omnipresent in nature and the advance of micro-fabrication and assembly techniques in recent years offers increasing ability to control this phenomenon. Here, we identify how surface roughness influences the…
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…
We present a model of the hydraulic fracturing of heterogeneous poroelastic media. The formalism is an effective continuum model that captures the coupled dynamics of the fluid pressure and the fractured rock matrix and models both the…
Experiments on quasistatic crack propagation in gelatin hydrogels reveal a new branching instability triggered by wetting the tip opening with a drop of aqueous solvent less viscous than the bulk one. We show that the emergence of unstable…