Related papers: Tessellated granular metamaterials with tunable el…
Jammed packings of granular materials display complex mechanical response. For example, the ensemble-averaged shear modulus $\left\langle G \right\rangle$ increases as a power-law in pressure $p$ for static packings of soft spherical…
Multiscale periodic metamaterials have been designed for numerous applications, such as impact absorption, acoustic cloaking, photonic band gaps, and mechanical logic gates. This prior work has focused on optimizing mesoscale structure for…
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…
Granular packings of non-convex or elongated particles can form free-standing structures like walls or arches. For some particle shapes, such as staples, the rigidity arises from interlocking of pairs of particles, but the origins of…
Experiments on isotropic compression of a granular assembly of spheres show that the shear and bulk moduli vary with the confining pressure faster than the 1/3 power law predicted by Hertz-Mindlin effective medium theories (EMT) of contact…
Under an externally applied load, granular packings form force chains that depend on the contact network and moduli of the grains. In this work, we investigate packings of variable modulus (VM) particles, where we can direct force chains by…
Foams made of complex fluids such as particle suspensions have a great potential for the development of advanced aerated materials. In this paper we study the rheological behavior of liquid foams loaded with granular suspensions. We focus…
The mechanics of granular media at low liquid saturation levels remain poorly understood. Macroscopic mechanical properties are affected by microscale forces and processes, such as capillary forces, inter-particle friction, liquid flows,…
Granular media near jamming exhibit fascinating properties, which can be harnessed to create jammed-granulate metamaterials: materials whose characteristics arise not only from the shape and material properties of the particles at the…
In simulations, particles are traditionally treated as rigid platforms with variable sizes, shapes and interaction parameters. While this representation is applicable for rigid core platforms, particles consisting of soft platforms (e.g.…
Understanding the coupled thermo-mechanical behaviour of compacted granular beds can benefit various industrial applications, such as pebble bed design in fusion reactors. In this study, a thermo-mechanical discrete element method based on…
One of the essential questions in the area of granular matter is, how to obtain macroscopic tensorial quantities like stress and strain from ``microscopic'' quantities like the contact forces in a granular assembly. Different averaging…
Everyday experience shows that cellular sheets are stiffened by the presence of a pressurized gas: from bicycle inner tubes to bubble wrap, the presence of an internal pressure increases the stiffness of otherwise floppy structures. The…
Ferrogels and magnetoelastomers are composite materials obtained by embedding magnetic particles of mesoscopic size in a crosslinked polymeric matrix. They combine the reversible elastic deformability of polymeric materials with the high…
The study of granular crystals, metamaterials that consist of closely packed arrays of particles that interact elastically, is a vibrant area of research that combines ideas from disciplines such as materials science, nonlinear dynamics,…
We investigate the segregation of a dense binary mixture of granular particles that only differ in their restitution coefficient. The mixture is vertically vibrated in the presence of gravity. We find a partial segregation of the species,…
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…
Experiments with acoustic waves guided along the mechanically free surface of an unconsolidated granular packed structure provide information on the elasticity of granular media at very low pressures that are naturally controlled by the…
Soft elastic composite materials can serve as actuators when they transform changes in external fields into mechanical deformation. Here, we address the corresponding deformational behavior of magnetic gels and elastomers, consisting of…
By mixing glass beads with a curable polymer we create a well-defined cohesive granular medium, held together by solidified, and hence elastic, capillary bridges. This material has a geometry similar to a wet packing of beads, but with an…