Related papers: Minimal model of an active solid deviates from equ…

Active solids such as cell collectives, colloidal clusters, and active metamaterials exhibit diverse collective phenomena, ranging from rigid body motion to shape-changing mechanisms. The nonlinear dynamics of such active materials remains…

What characterises a solid is its way to respond to external stresses. Ordered solids, such crystals, display an elastic regime followed by a plastic one, both well understood microscopically in terms of lattice distortion and dislocations.…

Disordered soft materials, such as fibrous networks in biological contexts exhibit a nonlinear elastic response. We study such nonlinear behavior with a minimal model for networks on lattice geometries with simple Hookian elements with…

We examine the dynamics of a compressible active nematic liquid crystal on a frictional substrate. When frictional damping dominates over viscous dissipation, we eliminate flow in favor of active stresses to obtain a minimal dynamical model…

Internal activity can fundamentally reshape the mechanical behavior of solids, yet its role in softening and failure remains incompletely understood. In this study, we investigate spontaneous deformations in activated solids via non-affine…

Mechanical deformation of amorphous solids can be described as consisting of an elastic part in which the stress increases linearly with strain, up to a yield point at which the solid either fractures or starts deforming plastically. It is…

Active systems, which are driven out of equilibrium by local non-conservative forces, exhibit unique behaviors and structures with potential utility for the design of novel materials. An important and difficult challenge along the path…

Deformations of conventional solids are described via elasticity, a classical field theory whose form is constrained by translational and rotational symmetries. However, flexible metamaterials often contain an additional approximate…

The elastic response of mechanical, chemical, and biological systems is often modeled using a discrete arrangement of Hookean springs, either representing finite material elements or even the molecular bonds of a system. However, to date,…

Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…

We present a microscopic model of a disordered viscoelastic active solid, i.e. an active material whose long time behaviour is elastic as opposed to viscous. It is composed of filaments, passive crosslinks and molecular motors powered by…

Active materials are media for which deformations can occur in absence of loads, given an external stimulus. Two approaches to the modeling of such materials are mainly used in literature, both based on the introduction of a new tensor: an…

A simple model for solid friction is analyzed. It is based on tangential springs representing interlocked asperities of the surfaces in contact. Each spring is given a maximal strain according to a probability distribution. At their maximal…

Hooke's law states that the forces or stresses experienced by an elastic object are proportional to the applied deformations or strains. The number of coefficients of proportionality between stress and strain, i.e., the elastic moduli, is…

We investigate theoretically the collective dynamics of soft active particles living in a viscous fluid. We focus on a minimal model for active but non-motile particles consisting of $N>1$ elastic dimers deformed by active stresses and…

We perform molecular dynamic (MD) simulations of frictional non-thermal particles driven by an externally applied shear stress. After the system jams following a transient flow, we probe its mechanical response in order to clarify whether…

We study a model describing the slow flow of a fluid through a deformable, porous, elastic solid undergoing small deformations. The stress-strain relationship of the solid incorporates nonlinear effects, formulated as a perturbation of the…

This paper investigates the behavior of a heavy soft spring in steady circular motion. Since the spring is inhomogeneous due to centrifugal force, one can rigorously prove that it follows the one-dimensional static Willis-form equations.…

The dynamics of soft mechanical metamaterials provides opportunities for many exciting engineering applications. Previous studies often use discrete systems, composed of rigid elements and nonlinear springs, to model the nonlinear dynamic…

Understanding the particle-scale transition from elastic deformation to plastic flow is central to making predictions about the bulk material properties and response of disordered materials. To address this issue, we perform experiments on…