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Cracks in brittle materials produce two types of generic surface structures: facets at low velocities and micro-branches at higher ones. Here we observe a transition from faceting to micro-branching in polyacrylamide gels that is…
Curvature and mechanics are intimately connected for thin materials, and this coupling between geometry and physical properties is readily seen in folded structures from intestinal villi and pollen grains, to wrinkled membranes and…
We find examples in string theory of locally wrapped D-branes. These excitations mimic skyrmions in that they correspond to topological excitations of the scalar fields parametrizing the brane motion in the space transverse to its…
The aim of this work is to study the dynamics and stability of soft shape-morphing configurations and specifically the modes of interaction between the front and rear airfoil segments. Initially we present several steady-state solutions,…
In the decay region around the centreline of three qualitatively different turbulent plane wakes, the turbulence is non-homogeneous and two-point turbulent diffusion counteracts the turbulence cascade all the way down to scales smaller than…
Spatially extended systems can support local transient excitations in which just a part of the system is excited. The mechanisms reported so far are local excitability and excitation of a localized structure. Here we introduce an…
We investigate the depinning transition occurring in dislocation assemblies. In particular, we consider the cases of regularly spaced pileups and low angle grain boundaries interacting with a disordered stress landscape provided by solute…
The formation of periodic wrinkles in soft layered materials due to mechanical instabilities is prevalent in nature and has been proposed for use in multiple applications. However, such phenomena have been explored predominantly in…
Simulating percolation and critical phenomena of labelled species inside films composed of single-component linear homogeneous macromolecules using molecular Monte Carlo method in 3 dimensions, we study dependence of these conducting…
From cell development to space rockets, the mechanical stability of thin shells is crucial across many industrial and natural processes. However, predicting shells' failure properties remains an open challenge, owing to their sensitivity to…
Polymer gels are comprised of a three-dimensional, cross-linked network that can typically withstand the mechanical deformation associated with both swelling and de-swelling. Thus, gels can be designed with smart behaviors that require both…
The shapes of epithelial tissues result from a complex interplay of contractile forces in the cytoskeleta of the cells in the tissue, and adhesion forces between them. A host of discrete, cell-based models describe these forces by assigning…
We study the thermodynamic and dynamic behaviors of twist-induced denaturation bubbles in a long, stretched random sequence of DNA. The small bubbles associated with weak twist are delocalized. Above a threshold torque, the bubbles of…
We experimentally study compression of thin plates in rectangular boxes with variable height. A cascade of buckling is generated. It gives rise to a self-similar evolution of elastic reaction of plates with box height which surprisingly…
We derive a multiphysics model that accounts for network elasticity with spontaneous strains, swelling and nematic interactions in liquid crystal gels (LCGs). We discuss the coupling among the various physical mechanisms, with particular…
Dislocations are the carriers of plasticity in crystalline materials. Their collective interaction behavior is dependent on the strain rate and sample size. In small specimens, details of the nucleation process are of particular importance.…
We study the scaling behaviors in the wind velocity time series collected at the atmospheric surface layer and compare them with two commonly used cascade models, the truncated stable distribution and the log-normal model. Results show that…
We document a sequence of bifurcations and elastic patterns in sheared bent sheets of intermediate aspect ratio. The sheets undergo inversion of curvature through the passage of localized features, often in S-shaped pairs. Nested…
Thin rigid sheets floating on a liquid substrate appear, for example, in coatings and surfactant monolayers. Upon uniaxial compression the sheet undergoes transitions from a compressed flat state to a periodic wrinkled pattern to a…
Biological membranes often exhibit heterogeneous protein patterns, which cells control. Strong patterns, like the polarity spot in budding yeast, can be described as surface condensates, formed by physical interactions between constituents.…