Related papers: Marginal Stability Enables Memory Training in Jamm…

A growing body of research indicates that structural plasticity mechanisms are crucial for learning and memory consolidation. Starting from a simple phenomenological model, we exploit a mean-field approach to develop a theoretical framework…

Mechanical stability of Ag and Cu printed and evaporated metallization lines on polymer substrates is investigated by means of monotonic tensile and cyclic bending tests. It is shown that lines which demonstrate good performance during…

Plastic flow in amorphous solids is known to be carried by localized shear transformations (STs) which have been proposed to preferentially initiate from some defect units in the structure, akin to dislocations and point defects in…

We poorly understand the properties of amorphous systems at small length scales, where a continuous elastic description breaks down. This is apparent when one considers their vibrational and transport properties, or the way forces propagate…

Jamming is a phenomenon shared by a wide variety of systems, such as granular materials, foams, and glasses in their high density regime. This has motivated the development of a theoretical framework capable of explaining many of their…

A wide range of disordered materials, from biological to geological assemblies, feature discrete elements undergoing large shape changes. How significant geometrical variations at the microscopic scale affect the response of the assembly,…

How do phase separated cellular structures set their size? To elucidate this, we study the dynamics and steady states of a phase separating nucleator that is advected by the self-straining cytoskeletal network which it nucleates. We find…

Continuous attractor networks (CANs) are widely used to model how the brain temporarily retains continuous behavioural variables via persistent recurrent activity, such as an animal's position in an environment. However, this memory…

We study the mobility of objects embedded in an immersed granular packing and subjected to cyclic loadings. In this aim, we conducted experiments using glass beads immersed in water and a horizontal plate subjected to a cyclic uplift force.…

Shearing stresses can change the volume of a material via a nonlinear effect known as shear dilatancy. We calculate the elastic dilatancy coefficient of soft sphere packings and random spring networks, two canonical models of marginal…

We study the critical behavior of low-frequency vibrations of packings with pinned particles near the jamming point. Soft modes form a plateau in the density of states and its frequency is controlled by the contact number as the ordinary…

We present simple models of particulate materials whose mechanical integrity arises from a jamming process. We argue that such media are generically "fragile", that is, they are unable to support certain types of incremental loading without…

Fatigue caused by cyclic bending of a piece of material, resulting in its mechanical failure, is a phenomenon that had been studied for ages by engineers and physicists alike. In this Letter we study such fatigue in a strip of athermal…

Hard sphere colloidal particles are a basic model system for general research into phase behavior, ordering and out-equilibrium glass transitions. Experimentally it has been shown that oscillatory shearing of a monodisperse hard sphere…

We study theoretically the dynamical process of yielding in cyclically sheared amorphous materials, within a thermal elastoplastic model and the soft glassy rheology model. Within both models we find an initially slow accumulation, over…

We consider the slow and athermal deformations of amorphous solids and show how the ensuing sequence of discrete plastic rearrangements can be mapped onto a directed network. The network topology reveals a set of highly connected regions…

We study theoretically the dynamics of soft glassy materials during the process of stress relaxation following the rapid imposition of a shear strain. By detailed numerical simulations of a mesoscopic soft glassy rheology model and three…

Steadily shearing a non-Brownian suspension forms a memory of direction, while shearing back and forth forms a memory of amplitude. Each memory is evident in the systems response to further shear, exemplifying its strong history-dependence.…

Highly acurate numerical simulations are employed to highlight the subtle but important differences in the mechanical stability of perfect crystalline solids versus amorphous solids. We stress the difference between strain values at which…

The shear-banding instability in quasi-statically driven bulk metallic glasses emerges from collective dynamics, mediated by shear transformation zones and associated non-local elastic interactions. It is also phenomenologically known that…