Related papers: Dehydration induced mechanical instabilities in ac…
A theoretical and experimental study of the spin-over mode induced by the elliptical instability of a flow contained in a slightly deformed rotating spherical shell is presented. This geometrical configuration mimics the liquid rotating…
Inertial cavitation in soft matter is an important phenomenon featured in a wide array of biological and engineering processes. Recent advances in experimental, theoretical, and numerical techniques have provided access into a world full of…
Active stresses can cause instabilities in contractile gels and living tissues. Here we describe a generic hydrodynamic theory that treats these systems as a mixture of two phases of varying activity and different mechanical properties. We…
Active cholesterics are chiral in both their structure, which has continuous screw symmetry, and their active stresses, which include contributions from torque dipoles. Both expressions of chirality give rise to curl forces in the…
In this work, we consider the stability of a spherical shell under combined loading from a uniform external pressure and a homogenous natural curvature. Non-mechanical stimuli, such as one that tends to modify the rest curvature of an…
We report experimental observations of an undulational instability of myelin figures. Motivated by this, we examine theoretically the deformation and possible instability of concentric, cylindrical, multi-lamellar membrane structures. Under…
Spontaneous material shape changes, such as swelling, growth or thermal expansion, can be used to trigger dramatic elastic instabilities in thin shells. These instabilities originate in geometric incompatibility between the preferred…
Using numerical simulations, we study the failure of an amorphous solid under quasi-static expansion starting from a homogeneous high-density state. During the volume expansion, we demonstrate the existence of instabilities manifesting via…
Mechanical deformation of amorphous solids can be described as consisting of an elastic part in which the stress increases linearly with strain, up to a yield point at which the solid either fractures or starts deforming plastically. It is…
We numerically study the effect of an active turbulent environment on a passive deformable droplet. The system is simulated using coupled hydrodynamic and nematodynamic equations for nematic liquid crystals with an active stress which is…
When a rigid body collides with a liquid surface with sufficient velocity, it creates a splash curtain above the surface and entrains air behind the sphere, creating a cavity below the surface. While cavity dynamics have been studied for…
We study the snapping instability of a spherical elastic shell induced by a viscous flow, the umbrella flipping problem when life is at low Reynolds numbers. We combine precision desktop-scale experiments, fluid-structure simulations, shell…
The dynamics of active smectic liquid crystals confined on a spherical surface is explored through an active phase field crystal model. Starting from an initially randomly perturbed isotropic phase, several types of topological defects are…
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…
Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…
Living systems are chiral on multiple scales, from constituent biopolymers to large scale morphology, and their active mechanics is both driven by chiral components and serves to generate chiral morphologies. We describe the mechanics of…
Models for fluid deformable surfaces provide valid theories to describe the dynamics of thin fluidic sheets of soft materials. To use such models in morphogenesis and development requires to incorporate active forces. We consider active…
During the early-stages of embryo development, morphogenesis--- the emergence of shape and form in living organisms--- is almost exclusively associated with monolayers of tightly bound epithelial cells. To understand how such tissues change…
Amorphous solids are known to fail catastrophically and in some situations, nano-scaled cavities are believed to play a significant role in the failure. In a recent work, using numerical simulations, we have shown the correspondence between…
We propose a dynamical theory of low-temperature shear deformation in amorphous solids. Our analysis is based on molecular-dynamics simulations of a two-dimensional, two-component noncrystalline system. These numerical simulations reveal…