Related papers: Buckling mediated by mobile localized elastic exci…
In the experiments on stress-induced phase transitions in SMA strips, several interesting instability phenomena have been observed, including a necking-type instability, a shear-type instability and an orientation instability. By using the…
The processing of thin-structured materials in a fluidic environment, from nearly inextensible but flexible graphene sheets to highly extensible polymer films, arises in many applications. So far, little is known about the dynamics of such…
We study the onset of delamination blisters in a growing elastic sheet adhered to a flat stiff substrate. When the ends of the sheet are kept fixed, its growth arouses residual stresses that lead to delamination. This instability can be…
Dislocations in soft condensed matter systems such as lamellar systems of polymers, liquid crystals and ternary mixtures of oil, water and surfactant (amphiphilic systems) are described in the framework of continuum elastic theory. These…
The equilibrium amorphous solid state -- formed, e.g., by adequately randomly crosslinking the constituents of a macromolecular fluid -- is a heterogeneous state characterized by a universal distribution of particle localization lengths.…
Thin elastic sheets bend easily, leading to mechanical instabilities such as wrinkling. Here, we investigate wrinkles at edges of bi-strips, which consist of two thin sheets, one that swells and one that does not, joined side-by-side. It is…
When fast cracks become unstable to microscopic branching (micro-branching), fracture no longer occurs in an effective 2D medium. We follow in-plane crack front dynamics via real-time measurements in brittle gels as micro-branching unfolds…
We use inelastic hard sphere molecular dynamics simulations and laboratory experiments to study patterns in vertically oscillated granular layers. The simulations and experiments reveal that {\em phase bubbles} spontaneously nucleate in the…
Dense granular systems subjected to an imposed shear stress undergo stick-slip dynamics with systematic patterns of dilation-compaction. During each stick phase, as the frictional strength builds up, the granular system dilates to…
Motivated by recent experiments, we present a study of the dynamics of cracks in thin sheets. While the equations of elasticity for thin plates are well known, there remains the question of path selection for a propagating crack. We invoke…
Combining experiments and theory, we address the dynamics of self-propelled particles in crowded environments. We first demonstrate that motile colloids cruising at constant speed through random lattices undergo a smooth transition from…
For several atomistic models of glass formers, at conditions below their glassy dynamics onset temperatures, ${T_\mathrm{o}}$, we use importance sampling of trajectory space to study the structure, statistics and dynamics of excitations…
The transition from stick to slip at a dry frictional interface occurs through the breaking of the junctions between the two contacting surfaces. Typically, interactions between the junctions through the bulk lead to rupture fronts…
Thin elastic sheets and membranes are known to wrinkle when they are stretched -- the associated physics is highly non-linear. The mechanics of thin films that exhibit unusual behavior upon stretching, when they possess auxetic structure,…
We provide a minimal continuum model for mesoscale plasticity, explaining the cellular dislocation structures observed in deformed crystals. Our dislocation density tensor evolves from random, smooth initial conditions to form self-similar…
Elastic strips provide a canonical system for studying the mechanisms governing elastic shape transitions. Buckling, linear snap-through, and nonlinear snap-through have been observed in boundary-actuated strips and linked to the type of…
A large number (~10,000) of uniform stainless steel balls comprising less than one layer coverage on a vertically shaken plate provides a rich system for the study of excited granular media. Viewed from above, the horizontal motion in the…
Magnetic reconnection in laboratory, space and astrophysical plasmas is often invoked to explain explosive energy release and particle acceleration. However, the timescales involved in classical models within the macroscopic MHD regime are…
The failure of brittle solids involves, before macroscopic rupture, power-law distributed avalanches of local rupture events whereby microcracks nucleate and grow, which are also observed in for an elastic interface evolving in a…
Microgels are soft colloidal particles that, when dispersed in a solvent, swell and deswell in response to changes in environmental conditions, such as temperature, concentration, and $p$H. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we model bulk…