Related papers: Strain induced strengthening of soft thermoplastic…
Thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) are block copolymeric materials composed of plastomeric "hard" and elastomeric "soft" domains, by which they exhibit highly resilient yet dissipative large deformation features depending on volume fractions…
Confined geometries offer useful and experimentally amenable mechanical testing arrangements in which to study the molecular and micro-structural processes which govern plastic yield in stress environments dominated by hydrostatic pressure…
Soft biological tissues exhibit a remarkable resilience to large mechanical loads, a property which is associated with the strain stiffening capability of the biopolymer networks that structurally support the tissues. Yet, recent studies…
Stress-strain relations for random packings of entangling chains under triaxial compression can exhibit strain stiffening and sustain stresses several orders-of-magnitude beyond typical granular materials. X-ray tomography reveals the…
We have studied the elastic response of actin networks with both compliant and rigid crosslinks by modeling molecular motors as force dipoles. Our finite element simulations show that for compliant crosslinkers such as filamin A, the…
We propose a continuum theory to model the Mullins effect, which is ubiquitously observed in polymer composites. In the theory, the softening of the materials during the stretching process is accounted for by considering the delamination of…
Random packings of granular chains are presented as a model polymer system to investigate the contribution of entanglements to strain-stiffening in the absence of Brownian motion. The chain packings are sheared in triaxial compression…
The study deals with the Payne effect (a substantial decrease in the storage modulus of a particle-reinforced elastomer with an increase in the amplitude of mechanical oscillations). The influence of temperature, concentration of filler and…
Constitutive equations are derived for the viscoelastic behavior of filled elastomers at isothermal loading with finite strains. A particle-reinforced rubber is thought of as a composite where regions with low concentrations of junctions…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While traditional entropic network models can be fit to the total stress, their underlying assumptions are inconsistent with simulation results.…
Soft yet tough materials are ubiquitous in nature and everyday life. The ratio between fracture toughness and intrinsic fracture energy of a soft material defines its toughness enhancement. Soft materials' toughness enhancement has been…
Granular chain packings exhibit a striking emergent strain-stiffening behavior despite the individual looseness of the constitutive chains. Using indentation experiments on such assemblies, we measure an exponential increase in the…
As a stiff polymer tumbles in shear flow, it experiences compressive viscous forces that can cause it to buckle and undergo a sequence of morphological transitions with increasing flow strength. We use numerical simulations to uncover the…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While stress-strain curves for a wide range of temperature can be fit to the functional form predicted by entropic network models, many other…
The mechanical properties of biological materials are spatially heterogeneous. Typical tissues are made up of a spanning fibrous extracellular matrix in which various inclusions, such as living cells, are embedded. While the influence of…
Soft composite solids, comprising discrete inclusions embedded within a compliant matrix, are emerging candidates for engineering synthetic tissues and soft robotic materials. Current strategies for controlling their nonlinear mechanics,…
Cold compaction of ceramic powders is driven by plastic strain, during which the elastic stiffness of the material progressively increases from values typical of granular matter to those representative of a fully dense solid. This increase…
In this paper we derive a model to describe the important inelastic features associated with the cyclic softening, often referred to as stress-softening, of soft biological tissue. The model developed here includes the notion of multiple…
Nanoscale polymeric thin films are widely used in diverse applications such as energy devices, flexible electronics and biosensors, where a satisfactory mechanical performance is of vital importance to realize their full functionality. It…
In this paper the inelastic features of stress relaxation, hysteresis and residual strain are combined with the Arruda-Boyce eight-chain model of elasticity, in order to develop a model that is capable of describing the Mullins effect for…