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Biological and robotic systems often operate in confined environments where material must be gathered without centralized control. Inspired by the effective collection strategies of aquatic worms (Lumbriculus variegatus and Tubifex…
Polymers and composite materials play an essential role in accelerator and detectors technology, with varying roles that range from electrical insulation and structural support to thermal management. This paper provides a general review of…
There has been increasing experimental evidence of non-affine elastic deformation mechanisms in biological soft tissues. These observations call for novel constitutive models which are able to describe the dominant underlying…
We study numerically how multiple deformable capsules squeeze into a constriction. This situation is largely encountered in microfluidic chips designed to manipulate living cells, which are soft entities. We use fully three-dimensional…
Properties of engineering materials are generally influenced by defects such as point defects (vacancies, interstitials, substitutional defects), line defects (dislocations), planar defects (grain boundaries, free surfaces/nanostructures,…
The bulk behaviour of granular materials is tied to its mesoscale and particle-scale features: strength properties arise from the buildup of various anisotropic structures at the particle-scale induced by grain connectivity (fabric), force…
We provide a two dimensional deformation model to describe how soft squishy circular particles respond to external forces and collisions. This model involves formulating mathematical equations and algorithms for the shape of a deformed…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the behavior of closely-fitting spherical and ellipsoidal particles moving through a fluid-filled cylinder at nanometer scales. The particle, the cylinder wall and the fluid solvent are all…
Cellular contractility, migration, and extracellular matrix (ECM) mechanics are critical for a wide range of biological processes including embryonic development, wound healing, tissue morphogenesis, and regeneration. Even though the…
Active colloidal particles provide versatile model systems for exploring non-equilibrium physics in motile matter. To date, most experimental realizations have focused on spherical particles, largely due to fabrication constraints. However,…
This article presents a new force model for performing quantitative simulations of dense granular materials. Interactions between multiple contacts (MC) on the same grain are explicitly taken into account. Our readily applicable method…
Flexible piezoelectric devices made of polymeric materials are widely used for micro- and nano-electro-mechanical systems. In particular, numerous recent applications concern energy harvesting. Due to the importance of computational…
Traction Force Microscopy (TFM) computes the forces exerted at the surface of an elastic material by measuring induced deformations in volume. It is used to determine the pattern of the adhesion forces exerted by cells or by cellular…
Soft membranes are commonly employed in shape-morphing applications, where the material is programmed to achieve a target shape upon activation by an external trigger, and as coating layers that alter the surface characteristics of bulk…
A multiscale QM/classical approach is presented, that is able to model the optical properties of complex nanostructures composed of a molecular system adsorbed on metal nanoparticles. The latter are described by a combined…
We study the adsorption of charged patchy particle models (CPPMs) on a thin film of a like-charged and dense polyelectrolyte (PE) brush (of 50 monomers per chain) by means of implicit-solvent, explicit-salt Langevin dynamics computer…
Polymer coatings on cellulosic fibres are widely used to enhance the natural fibre properties by improving, for example, the hydrophobicity and wet strength. Here, we investigate the effects of a terpolymer P(S-co-MABP-co-PyMA) coating on…
This paper introduces a new approach for simulating magnetic properties of nanocomposites comprising magnetic particles embedded in a non-magnetic matrix, taking into account the 3D structure of the system in which particles' positions…
Polymer composites were manufactured using biocarbon particles as a reinforcing filler to improve the mechanical and thermal properties. However, a detailed examination of dispersion and agglomeration of filler is essential to correlate the…
Designing reconfigurable materials based on deformable nanoparticles (NPs) hinges on an understanding of the energetically-favored shapes these NPs can adopt. Using simulations, we show that hollow, deformable patchy NPs tailored with…