Related papers: Soft-Elasticity Optimises Dissipation in 3D-Printe…
Inks deposited in conventional direct ink writing need to be able to support their own weight and that of the upper layers with minimal deformation to preserve the structural integrity of the three-dimensional (3D) printed parts. This…
Many new soft but tough rubbery materials have been recently discovered and new applications such as flexible prosthetics, stretchable electrodes or soft robotics continuously emerge. Yet, a credible multi-scale quantitative picture of…
Nematic elastomers and glasses deform spontaneously when subjected to temperature changes. This property can be exploited in the design of heterogeneously patterned thin sheets that deform into a non-trivial shape when heated or cooled. In…
Nematic elastomers are programmable soft materials that display large, reversible and predictable deformation under an external stimulus such as a change in temperature or light. While much of the work in the field has focused on actuation…
Soft adhesive contacts are ubiquitous in nature and are increasingly used in synthetic systems, such as flexible electronics and soft robots, due to their advantages over traditional joining techniques. While methods to study the failure of…
We demonstrate a method to induce tensile and compressive strain into two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) MoS$_{2}$ via the deposition of stressed thin films to encapsulate exfoliated flakes. With this technique we can…
Using a geometrically motivated 8-parameter ansatz through the thickness, we reduce a three-dimensional shell-like geometrically nonlinear Cosserat material to a fully two-dimensional shell model. Curvature effects are fully taken into…
Mechanical metamaterials are structures designed to exhibit an exotic response, such as topological soft modes at a surface. Here we explore single-material 3D prints of these topological structures by translating a ball-and-spring model…
We derive a non-linear one-dimensional (1d) strain gradient model predicting the necking of soft elastic cylinders driven by surface tension, starting from 3d finite-strain elasticity. It is asymptotically correct: the microscopic…
This work aims to identify common challenges in the preparation of the blister test devices designed for measurement of energy release rate for brittle thin films and to propose easy-to-implement solutions accordingly. To this end, we…
Few-layer GaSe is one of the latest additions to the family of 2D semiconducting crystals whose properties under strain are still relatively unexplored. Here, we study rippled nanosheets that exhibit a periodic compressive and tensile…
In this paper, the two-dimensional pure bending of a hyperelastic substrate coated by a nematic liquid crystal elastomer (abbreviated as NLCE) is studied within the framework of nonlinear elasticity. The governing system, arising from the…
Dielectric elastomers have recently been proposed for various biologically-relevant applications, in which they may operate in fluidic environments where surface tension effects may have a significant effect on their stability and…
Soft particles display highly versatile properties with respect to hard colloids, even more so at fluid-fluid interfaces. In particular, microgels, consisting of a cross-linked polymer network, are able to deform and flatten upon adsorption…
We numerically show that molecules adsorbed in a soft porous crystal form a superlattice (SL) stabilized by elastic interactions. In a mechanically flexible honeycomb lattice model, when the elastic interactions between the next nearest…
The main aim of the present work is to estimate the effective elastic stiffnesses of a two-phase diamond/$\beta$-SiC composite thin film that is fabricated by chemical vapor deposition. The parameters of linear elasticity are determined by…
We investigate the damping enhancement in a class of biomimetic staggered composites via a combination of design, modeling, and experiment. In total, three kinds of staggered composites are designed by mimicking the structure of bone and…
Characterizing the softness of deformable materials having partial elastic and partial viscous behaviour via soft lubrication experiments has emerged as a versatile and robust methodology in recent times. However, a straightforward…
Understanding surface mechanics of soft solids, such as soft polymeric gels, is crucial in many engineering processes, such as dynamic wetting and adhesive failure. In these situations, a combination of capillary and elastic forces drives…
A novel approach was derived to compute the elastic displacement field from a measured elastic deformation field (i.e., deformation gradient or strain). The method is based on integrating the deformation field using Finite Element…