Related papers: Emergent reprogrammable mechanical memory in soft …
Soft machines display shape adaptation to external circumstances due to their intrinsic compliance. To achieve increasingly more responsive behaviors upon interactions without relying on centralized computation, embodying memory directly in…
Using numerical simulations it is shown that a jammed, random pack of soft frictional grains can store an arbitrary waveform that is applied as a small time-dependent shear while the system is slowly compressed. When the system is…
We demonstrate the existence of unconventional rheological and memory properties in systems of soft-deformable particles whose energy depends on their shape, via numerical simulations. At large strains, these systems experience an…
Cutting soft materials is a complex process governed by the interplay of bulk large deformation, interfacial soft fracture, and contact forces with the cutting tool. Existing experimental characterizations and numerical models often fail to…
Elastic metamaterials are often designed for a single permanent function. We explore the possibility of altering a material's function repeatedly through a self-organization, "training" process, controlled by applied strains. We show that…
Living organisms can demonstrate highly adaptable and sophisticated responses using memory resulting from repeated exposure to external conditions or training. However, realizing similar adaptability in mechanical responses in inanimate,…
Soft composite solids, comprising discrete inclusions embedded within a compliant matrix, are emerging candidates for engineering synthetic tissues and soft robotic materials. Current strategies for controlling their nonlinear mechanics,…
Many active systems display nematic order, while interacting with their environment. In this work, we show theoretically how environment-stored memory acts an effective external field that aligns active nematics. The coupling to the…
Embedding magnetic colloidal particles in an elastic polymer matrix leads to smart soft materials that can reversibly be addressed from outside by external magnetic fields. We discover a pronounced nonlinear superelastic stress-strain…
Disordered fibrous matrices, formed by the random assembly of fibers, provide the structural framework for many biological systems and biomaterials. Applied deformation modifies the alignment and stress states of constituent fibers, tuning…
We investigate the memory effects under oscillatory shear deformation of amorphous solids through computer simulations. Applications of shear deformations in all orthogonal directions show that encoded memories via this protocol are more…
Mechanical memory and computing are gaining significant traction as means to augment traditional electronics for robust and energy efficient performance in extreme environments. However, progress has largely focused on bistable…
Soft materials are not only highly deformable but they also possess rich and diverse body dynamics. Soft body dynamics exhibit a variety of properties, including nonlinearity, elasticity, and potentially infinitely many degrees of freedom.…
How do cells tune emergent properties at the scale of tissues? One class of such emergent behaviors are rigidity transitions, in which a tissue changes from a solid-like to a fluid-like state or vice versa. Here, we introduce a new way for…
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…
We report detailed theoretical investigations of the micro-mechanics and bulk elastic properties of composites consisting of randomly distributed stiff fibers embedded in an elastic matrix in two and three dimensions. Recent experiments…
The discovery that memory of particle configurations and plastic events can be stored in amorphous solids subject to oscillatory shear has spurred research into methods for storing and retrieving information from these materials. However,…
We show experimentally that both single and multiple mechanical memories can be encoded in an amorphous bubble raft, a prototypical soft glass, subject to an oscillatory strain. In line with recent numerical results, we find that multiple…
Repeated/cyclic shearing can drive amorphous solids to a steady-state encoding a memory of the applied strain amplitude. However, recent experiments find that the effect of such memory formation on the mechanical properties of the bulk…
Using numerical simulations it is shown that a random, athermal pack of soft frictional grains will store an arbitrary waveform that is applied as a small time-dependent shear while the system is slowly compressed. When the system is…