Related papers: Spider silks mechanics: predicting humidity and te…
We study the effect of spatially-correlated heterogeneity on isothermal drying of porous media. We combine a minimal pore-scale model with microfluidic experiments with the same pore geometry. Our simulated drying behavior compare favorably…
Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to study spatially heterogeneous dynamics in a model of viscous silica above and below the critical temperature of the mode coupling theory, $T_{MCT}$. Specifically, we follow the evolution of…
The collective behavior of swarms is extremely difficult to estimate or predict, even when the local agent rules are known and simple. The presented work seeks to leverage the similarities between fluids and swarm systems to generate a…
Changes in the mechanical properties of granular materials, induced by variations in the intrinsic compressibility of the particles, are investigated by means of numerical simulations based on the combination of the Finite Element and…
This work focuses on the thermodynamics of pseudo-elastic models which represent the Mullins effect. Two established models are analyzed theoretically, their thermomechanical properties are derived, and certain critical points are…
Characterizing the connection between material design decisions/parameters and their effective properties allows for accelerated materials development and optimization. We present a global sensitivity analysis of woven composite…
Microswimmers often exhibit surprising patterns due to the nonequilibrium nature of their dynamics. Collectively, suspensions of microswimmers appear as a liquid whose properties set it apart from its passive counterpart. To understand the…
During drying of colloidal suspensions, colloidal particles can form concentrated particle layers beneath the receding free surface. The drying rate can gradually decrease with the growth of the particle layers. We construct a model to…
Thermoresponsive microgels find widespread use as colloidal model systems, because their temperature-dependent size allows facile tuning of their volume fraction "in situ". However, an interaction potential unifying their behavior across…
Randomly crosslinked macromolecules undergo a liquid-to-amorphous solid phase transition at a critical crosslink concentration. This transition has two main signatures: the random localization of a fraction of the monomers and the emergence…
There is a growing interest in producing materials with mechanical behaviours similar to those of internal organs. An artificial tissue may be expected to experience several types of compressive and shear deformation in the course of normal…
Bidisperse particle systems are common in both natural and engineered materials, and it is known to influence packing, flow, and stability. However, their direct effect on elastic properties, particularly in systems with attractive…
Extremely compliant elastic materials, such as thin membranes or soft gels, can be deformed when wetted by a liquid drop. It is commonly assumed that the solid capillarity in "soft wetting" can be treated in the same manner as liquid…
Spider silks are remarkable materials characterized by superb mechanical properties such as strength, extensibility and lightweightedness. Yet, to date, limited models are available to fully explore sequence-property relationships for…
For a deeply supercooled liquid just above its glass transition temperature, we present a simple thermodynamic model, where the deeply supercooled liquid is assumed to be a mixture of solid-like and liquid-like micro regions. The mole…
Soft materials, such as colloidal suspensions, polymer solutions, and biological systems, are typically multicomponent mixtures of macromolecules and simpler components (e.g., microions, monomers, solvent) that can assemble into complex…
We present a theory to predict the structure and thermodynamics of mixtures of colloids of different diameters, building on our earlier work [J. Chem. Phys. 145, 074904 (2016)] that considered mixtures with all particles constrained to have…
We study the effect of heavy impurities on the dynamics of supercooled liquids. When a small fraction of particles in the supercooled liquid is made heavier, they exhibit slower dynamics than the original particles and also make the overall…
We present the results of a large scale computer simulation of supercooled silica. We find that at high temperatures the diffusion constants show a non-Arrhenius temperature dependence whereas at low temperature this dependence is also…
Surface stress and surface energy are two fundamental parameters that determine the surface properties of any materials. While it is commonly believed that the surface stress and surface energy of liquids are identical, the relationship…