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When a rigid object approaches a soft material in a viscous fluid, hydrodynamic stresses arise in the lubricated contact region and deform the soft material. The elastic deformation modifies in turn the flow, hence generating 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…
Rheological measurements of model colloidal gels reveal that large variations in the shear moduli as colloidal volume-fraction changes are not reflected by simple structural parameters such as the coordination number, which remains almost a…
Through tridimensonal numerical simulations of crack propagating in material with an elastic moduli heterogeneity it is shown that the presence of a simple inclusion can affect dramatically the propagation of the crack. Both the presence of…
We study the aging of colloidal gels using light microscopy movies of depletion gels from the International Space Station. Under such microgravity conditions, we observe a slowdown in particle dynamics consistent with gel aging. Stronger…
Soft particulate gels include materials we can eat, squeeze, or 3D print. From foods to bio-inks to cement hydrates, these gels are composed of a small amount of particulate matter (proteins, polymers, colloidal particles, or agglomerates…
Gelatin is often used as an analog for studying soft and biological materials in order to understand the mechanics of behavior of biological tissue in events like traumatic brain injuries. The material properties of gelatin change with the…
The aggregation of protein-stabilised emulsions leads to the formation of emulsion gels. These soft solids are classically envisioned as droplet-filled matrices. Here however, it is assumed that protein-coated sub-micron droplets contribute…
The batch settling test is widely used to estimate the compressive rheology of strongly flocculated colloidal suspensions, in particular the compressive yield strength and hydraulic permeability. Recently it has been discovered that wall…
Soft elastic composite materials containing particulate rigid inclusions in a soft elastic matrix are candidates for developing soft actuators or tunable damping devices. The possibility to reversibly drive the rigid inclusions within such…
Cell membranes are anchored to the cytoskeleton via immobile inclusions. We investigate the effect of such anchors on the in-plane dynamics of a fluid membrane and mobile inclusions (proteins) embedded in it. The immobile particles lead to…
A mixture of hard-sphere particles and model emulsion droplets is studied with a Brownian dynamics simulation. We find that the addition of nonwetting emulsion droplets to a suspension of pure hard spheres can lead to both gas-liquid and…
Photoelasticity is employed to investigate the stress state near stiff rectangular and rhombohedral inclusions embedded in a 'soft' elastic plate. Results show that the singular stress field predicted by the linear elastic solution for the…
Repeated loading of a solid leads to microstructural damage that ultimately results in catastrophic material failure. While posing a major threat to the stability of virtually all materials, the microscopic origins of fatigue, especially…
A simple and popular constitutive model used to describe the compressional strength of a consolidating strongly cohesive particulate gel is tested further with new experimental data. Strong cohesive particulate gels have variously been…
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…
A micromechanical approach is set-up to analyse the increase in elastic stiffness related to development of plastic deformation (the elastoplastic coupling concept) occurring during the compaction of a ceramic powder. Numerical simulations…
We use dedicated microfluidic devices to expose soft hydrogel particles to a rapid change in the externally applied osmotic pressure and observe a non-monotonic response: After an initial rapid compression the particle slowly reswells to…
Our understanding of the structural features of foams and emulsions has advanced significantly over the last 20 years. However, with a search for "super-stable" liquid dispersions, foam and emulsion science employs increasingly complex…
We present a numerical implementation of an active inclusion in a granular material submitted to a biaxial test. We discuss the dependence of the response to this perturbation on two parameters: the intra-granular friction coefficient on…