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Beams made from thin-walled elements, whilst very efficient in terms of the structural strength and stiffness to weight ratios, can be susceptible to highly complex instability phenomena. A nonlinear analytical formulation based on…
A binary quenched-annealed hard core mixture is considered in one dimension in order to model fluid adsorbates in narrow channels filled with a random matrix. Two different density functional approaches are employed to calculate adsorbate…
An elastic membrane that is forced to reside in a container smaller than its natural size will deform and, upon further volume reduction, eventually crumple. The crumpled state is characterized by the localization of energy in a complex…
Materials with an allotropic phase transformation can result in the formation of microstructures where grains have orientation relationships (ORs) determined by the transformation history. These microstructures influence the final material…
An efficient modulation of backscattered energy is one of the key requirements for enabling efficient wireless communication channels. Typical architectures, being based on either electronically or mechanically modulated reflectors, cannot…
We examine the shape change of a thin disk with an inserted wedge of material when it is pushed against a plane, using analytical, numerical and experimental methods. Such sheets occur in packaging, surgery and nanotechnology. We…
Self-healing silicones that are able to restore the functionalities and extend the lifetime of soft devices hold great potential in many applications. However, currently available silicones need to be triggered to self-heal or suffer from…
Single-mode deformations of two-dimensional materials, such as the Miura-ori zig-zag fold, are important to the design of deployable structures because of their robustness; these usually require careful pre-patterning of the material. Here…
We investigate fracture toughness of architected interfaces and their ability to maintain structural integrity and provide stable damage propagation conditions beyond the failure load. We propose theoretical and numerical frameworks to…
Topological defects are crucial to the thermodynamics and structure of condensed matter systems. For instance, when incorporated into crystalline membranes like graphene, disclinations with positive and negative topological charge…
A macro-constitutive model for the deformation response of periodic rotating bistable auxetic surfaces is developed. Focus is placed on isotropic surfaces made of bistable hexagonal cells composed of six triangular units with two stable…
We study the periodic buckling patterns that emerge when elastic shells are subjected to geometric confinement. Residual swelling provides access to range of shapes (saddles, rolled sheets, cylinders, and spherical sections) which vary in…
We present a numerical study of stretching monodomain smectic-A elastomer sheets, computed using the finite element method. When stretched parallel to the layer normal the microscopic layers in smectic elastomers are unstable to a…
Mechanical metamaterials capable of large deformations are an emerging platform for functional devices and structures across scales. Bistable designs are particularly attractive since they endow a single object with two configurations that…
We report on a simulational study of the compression and buckling of elastic ridges formed by joining the boundary of a flat sheet to itself. Such ridges store energy anomalously: their resting energy scales as the linear size of the sheet…
Foam is a canonical example of disordered soft matter where local force balance leads to the competition of many metastable configurations. Here we present an experimental and theoretical framework for "active foam" where an individual…
Mechanically bonded membranes of interlocked ring polymers are a significant generalization of conventional elastic sheets, where connectivity is provided by covalent bonding, and represent a promising class of topological meta-materials.…
An analytical model based on variational principles for a thin-walled stiffened plate subjected to axial compression is presented. A system of nonlinear differential and integral equations is derived and solved using numerical continuation.…
We investigate the collective behavior of suspended thermoresponsive microgels, that expel solvent and subsequently decrease in size upon heating. Using a binary mixture of differently thermoresponsive microgels, we demonstrate how…
Mechanical metamaterials made of flexible building blocks can exhibit a plethora of extreme mechanical responses, such as negative elastic constants, shape-changes, programmability and memory. To date, dissipation has largely remained…