Related papers: FoamFactor: Hydrogel-Foam Composite with Tunable S…
Active materials capable of autonomously modulating their mechanical properties are foundational to the development of next-generation soft technologies. Here, we introduce a novel class of extensible biohybrid hydrogels powered by living…
Amorphous materials of homogeneous structures usually suffer from nonuniform deformation under shear, which can develop into shear localization and eventually destructive shear band. One approach to tackle this issue is to introduce an…
When a swollen, thermoresponsive polymer gel is heated in a solvent bath, it expels solvent and deswells. When this heating is slow, deswelling proceeds homogeneously, as observed in a toroid-shaped gel that changes volume whilst…
Hydrophobic interactions provide driving forces for protein folding, membrane formation, and oil-water separation. Motivated by information theory, the poorly understood nonpolar solute interactions in water are investigated. A simple…
We study the fully-coupled dynamics between a fully-developed turbulent flow and an ensemble of immersed flexible fibers. We vary the concentration of the suspension, the mechanical properties and the length of the fibers in a vast…
We investigate how controlled foaming alters the mechanical dissipation of liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs). Using thermal expandable microspheres, we generate homogeneous foams with precisely tuned bubble volume fractions up to 13% and…
Haptic interfaces that can simultaneously modulate multiple physical properties remain a fundamental challenge in human-robot interaction. Existing systems typically allow the rendering of either geometric features or mechanical properties,…
Traditional vision-based material perception methods often experience substantial performance degradation under visually impaired conditions, thereby motivating the shift toward non-visual multimodal material perception. Despite this,…
Water evaporation is critically important for hydrogels in open-air applications, but theoretically modeling is difficult due to the complicated intermolecular interactions and sustained deformation. In this work, we construct a simplified…
Soft-granular media, such as dense emulsions, foams or tissues, exhibit either fluid- or solid-like properties depending on the applied external stresses. Whereas bulk rheology of such materials has been thoroughly investigated, the…
A theoretical model for the effect of water hydrogen bonding on the thermodynamics of hydrophobic hydration is proposed as a combination of the classical density functional theory with the recently developed probabilistic approach to water…
Grasping objects with diverse mechanical properties, such as heavy, slippery, or fragile items, remains a significant challenge in robotics. Conventional rigid grippers typically rely on increasing the normal forces to secure an object,…
Vacuum-forming is a common manufacturing technique for constructing thin plastic shell products by pressing heated plastic sheets onto a mold using atmospheric pressure. Vacuum-forming is ubiquitous in packaging and casing products in…
Supercooled liquids undergo a rapid change in dynamics as they are cooled to their glass transition temperature and turn from a flowing liquid into an amorphous solid. Depending on how steeply the viscosity changes with temperature around…
This paper presents a novel framework for modeling and conditional generation of 3D articulated objects. Troubled by flexibility-quality tradeoffs, existing methods are often limited to using predefined structures or retrieving shapes from…
We use computer simulations to study the microscopic dynamics of an athermal assembly of soft particles near the fluid-to-solid, jamming transition. Borrowing tools developed to study dynamic heterogeneity near glass transitions, we…
An overview of theoretical results and experimental data on the thermodynamics, structure and dynamics of the heterophase glass-forming liquids is presented. The theoretical approach is based on the mesoscopic heterophase fluctuations model…
Confinement can significantly alter fluid properties, offering potential for specific technological applications. However, achieving precise control over the structural complexity of confined fluids and soft matter remains challenging, as…
Coarse-grained models that preserve hydrodynamics provide a natural approach to study collective properties of soft-matter systems. Here, we demonstrate that commonly used integration schemes in dissipative particle dynamics give rise to…
Fat based pasty products are an essential part of food industries, both as process intermediate or end products. Such materials are made of a continuous fat phase in which solid particles are dispersed. Phenomena such as yield and fracture…