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Soft living tissues like cartilage can be considered as biphasic materials comprised of a fibrous complex biopolymer network and a viscous background liquid. Here, we show by a combination of experiment and theoretical analysis that both…
We study the diffusion process through an ideal polymer network, using numerical methods. Polymers are modeled by random walks on the bonds of a two-dimensional square lattice. Molecules occupy the lattice cells and may jump to the…
Recent studies of azo-dye doped liquid crystal elastomers show a strong photomechanical response. We report on models that predict experimental results that suggest photothermal heating is the dominant mechanism in a planar constrained…
Liquid Crystalline Elastomers (LCEs) are active materials that are of interest due to their programmable response to various external stimuli such as light and heat. When exposed to these stimuli, the anisotropy in the response of the…
Transition from bending-dominated to stretching-dominated elastic response in semi-flexible fibrous networks plays an important role in the mechanical behavior of cells and tissues. It is induced by changes in network connectivity and…
In this article, we construct and analyze models of anisotropic crosslinked polymers employing tools from the theory of liquid crystal elastomers. The anisotropy of these systems stems from the presence of rigid-rod molecular units in the…
Composed of microscopic layers that stack along one direction while maintaining fluid-like positional disorder within layers, smectics are excellent systems for exploring topology, defects and geometric memory in complex confining…
We present a study of the spreading of liquid droplets on a solid substrate at very small scales. We focus on the regime where effective wetting energy (binding potential) and surface tension effects significantly influence steady and…
Compressive mechanical stress exceeding a critical value leads to the formation of periodic surface buckling patterns in film-substrate systems. A comprehensive understanding of this buckling phenomenon is desired in applications where the…
We make a phenomenological model of optical two-beam interaction in a model planar liquid crystal cell. The liquid crystal is subject to homeotropic anchoring at the cell walls, is surrounded by thin photosensitive layers, and is subject to…
We consider a mathematical model that describes the flow of a Nematic Liquid Crystal (NLC) film placed on a flat substrate, across which a spatially-varying electric potential is applied. Due to their polar nature, NLC molecules interact…
Crystal plasticity theory is often employed to predict the mesoscopic states of polycrystalline metals, and is well-known to be costly to simulate. Using a neural network with convolutional layers encoding correlations in time and space, we…
The hydrodynamics of smectic films at an air-water interface is discussed, with particular focus on the viscous response of the film under flow normal to the layers. The corrections to the response functions of the smectic phase, arising…
We develop a Landau theory for bend flexoelectricity in liquid crystals of bent-core molecules. In the nematic phase of the model, the bend flexoelectric coefficient increases as we reduce the temperature toward the nematic to polar phase…
We study the optical response of a metamaterial surface created by a lattice of split-ring resonators covered with a nematic liquid crystal and demonstrate millisecond timescale switching between electric and magnetic resonances of the…
We propose a theoretical framework for dealing with a transient polymer network undergoing small deformations, based on the rate of breaking and re-forming of network crosslinks and the evolving elastic reference state. In this framework,…
We investigate the chemical dissolution of porous media using a network model in which the system is represented as a series of interconnected pipes with the diameter of each segment increasing in proportion to the local reactant…
The optomechanical coupling and transverse stability of a co-propagating monochromatic electromagnetic wave and mono-energetic beam of two-level atoms is investigated in the collisionless regime. The coupled dynamics are studied through a…
We have studied the transmission of transverse oscillations through a thin Fermi liquid film, using Landau's Fermi liquid theory. Fermi liquid theory describes the dynamics of interacting, degenerate fermion systems, for example…
Machine learning algorithms have been available since the 1990s, but it is much more recently that they have come into use also in the physical sciences. While these algorithms have already proven to be useful in uncovering new properties…