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Numerical simulations of thin sheets undergoing large deformations are computationally challenging. Depending on the scenario, they may spontaneously buckle, wrinkle, fold, or crumple. Nature's thin tissues often experience significant…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
Soft particles at fluid interfaces play an important role in many aspects of our daily life, such as the food industry, paints and coatings, and medical applications. Analytical methods are not capable of describing the emergent effects of…
We derive a multiphysics model that accounts for network elasticity with spontaneous strains, swelling and nematic interactions in liquid crystal gels (LCGs). We discuss the coupling among the various physical mechanisms, with particular…
Lattice structures have great potential for several application fields ranging from medical and tissue engineering to aeronautical one. Their development is further speeded up by the continuing advances in additive manufacturing…
The paper addresses the problem of a Mode III interfacial crack advancing quasi-statically in a heterogeneous composite material, that is a two-phase material containing elastic inclusions, both soft and stiff, and defects, such as…
Growth-elasticity is a powerful model framework for understanding complex shape development in soft biological tissues. At each instant, by mapping how continuum building blocks have grown geometrically and how they respond elastically to…
Soft materials with layered structure such as membranes, block copolymers, and smectics exhibit intriguing morphologies with nontrivial curvatures. We report on restructuring the Gaussian and mean curvatures of smectic A films with free…
Orthotropic shell structures are ubiquitous in biology and engineering, from bacterial cell walls to reinforced domes. We present a rescaling transformation that maps an orthotropic shallow shell to an isotropic one with a different local…
When cooled down, emulsion droplets stabilized by a frozen interface of alkane molecules and surfactants have been observed to undergo a spectacular sequence of morphological transformations: from spheres to faceted icosahedra, down to…
Reactive, semi-permeable interfaces play important roles in key biological processes such as targeted drug delivery, lipid metabolism, and signal transduction. These systems involve coupled surface reactions, transmembrane transport, and…
Mechanochemical processes on surfaces such as the cellular cortex or epithelial sheets, play a key role in determining patterns and shape changes of biological systems. To understand the complex interplay of hydrodynamics and material flows…
The transition from static to dynamic friction when an elastic body is slid over another is now known to result from the motion of interface rupture fronts. These fronts may be either crack-like or pulse-like, with the latter involving…
From the complex motions of robots to the oxygen binding of hemoglobin, the function of many mechanical systems depends on large, coordinated movements of their components. Such movements arise from a network of physical interactions in the…
The crystal-melt interfaces of a binary hard-sphere fluid mixture in coexistence with a single-component hard-sphere crystal is investigated using molecular-dynamics simulation. In the system under study, the fluid phase consists of a…
Adding perforations to a continuum sheet allows new modes of deformation, and thus modifies its elastic behavior. The failure behavior of such a perforated sheet is explored, using a model experimental system: a material containing a…
The evolution of interfaces is intrinsic to many physical processes ranging from cavitation in fluids to recrystallization in solids. Computational modeling of interface motion entails a number of challenges, many of which are related to…
We study the formation and evolution of localized geometrical defects in an indented cylindrical elastic shell using a combination of experiment and numerical simulation. We find that as a symmetric localized indentation on a…
We present Shape-Haptics, an approach for designers to rapidly design and fabricate passive force feedback mechanisms for physical interfaces. Such mechanisms are used in everyday interfaces and tools, and they are challenging to design.…
We investigate the crumpling of a sheet as it is repeatedly crushed onto itself by rolling it into a cylinder and twisting it axially while allowing the end-to-end length to evolve freely. As deduced from its plastic deformations, the sheet…