Related papers: Softer than soft: diving into squishy granular mat…
Flexible slender structures such as rods, ribbons, plates, and shells exhibit extreme nonlinear responses bending, twisting, buckling, wrinkling, and self contact, that defy conventional simulation frameworks. Discrete Differential Geometry…
Granular materials show inhomogeneous flows characterized by strain localization. When strain is localized in a sheared granular material, rigid regions of a nearly undeformed state are separated by shear bands, where the material yields…
The modeling of the elastic properties of granular or nanoscale systems requires the foundations of the theory of elasticity to be revisited, as one explores scales at which this theory may no longer hold. The only cases for which a…
This thesis is about the study of complex systems through simple models. Our work evidences the relevance of this kind of modeling in science, which provides us with a better understanding of nature at minimum cost. The fundamentals tools…
Three ideas are introduced that when brought together characterize the realistic quasiclassical realms of our quantum universe as particular kinds of sets of alternative coarse-grained histories defined by quasiclassical variables: (1)…
We investigate the down-hill creep of a layer of granular material on a slope caused by an oscillatory variation of the size of the particles. The material is modeled as an athermal two dimensional polydisperse system of soft disks under…
In polycrystalline materials, grain boundaries are sites of enhanced atomic motion, but the complexity of the atomic structures within a grain boundary network makes it difficult to link the structure and atomic dynamics. Here we use a…
Using a strategy that may be applied in theory or in experiments, we identify the regime in which a model binary soft matter mixture forms quasicrystals. The system is described using classical density functional theory combined with…
Granular materials, composed of discrete solid grains, can be modeled as simple mechanical systems. However, these materials can undergo spontaneous slow deformation, or creep, even under small forces and while in apparent mechanical…
We briefly review and update our earlier published model for dark matter consisting of nanometer size bubbles of a new speculated vacuum phase in which some ordinary material, e.g. carbon, is present under high pressure caused by the…
The present study investigates a weakly pulsed granular system of polystyrene spheres under long-time microgravity conditions on the International Space Station (ISS). The spheres are measured using Diffusing Wave Spectroscopy (DWS) and are…
The fundamental nature of Dark Matter (DM) has not been established. Indeed, beyond its gravitational effects, DM remains undetected by present experiments. In this situation, it is reasonable to wonder if other alternatives can effectively…
Above a certain density a granular material jams. This property can be controlled by either tuning a global property, such as the packing fraction or by applying shear strain, or at the micro-scale by tuning grain shape, inter-particle…
Entangled matter displays unusual and attractive properties and mechanisms: tensile strength, capabilities for assembly and disassembly, damage tolerance. While some of the attributes and mechanisms share some traits with traditional…
Granulation is a ubiquitous process crucial for many products ranging from food and care products to pharmaceuticals. Granulation is the process in which a powder is mixed with a small amount of liquid (binder) to form solid agglomerates…
We describe experimental investigations of the structure of two-dimensional spherical crystals. The crystals, formed by beads self-assembled on water droplets in oil, serve as model systems for exploring very general theories about the…
We propose a simple continuum model to interpret the shearing motion of dense, dry and cohesion-less granular media. Compressibility, dilatancy and Coulomb-like friction are the three basic ingredients. The granular stress is split into a…
When compressed frictional granular media are decompressed, generically a fragile configuration is created at low pressures. Typically this is accompanied by a giant frictional slippage as the fragile state collapses. We show that this…
Simple homogeneous shear flows of frictionless, deformable particles are studied by particle simulations at large shear rates and for differently soft, deformable particles. The particle stiffness sets a time-scale that can be used to scale…
Tightly packed granular particles under shear often exhibit intriguing intermittencies, specifically, sudden stress drops that we refer to as quaking. To probe the nature of this phenomenon, we prototype a circular shear cell that is…