Related papers: A Unifying Model for the Rheological Behavior of H…
Spider silk is a remarkable biomaterial with exceptional stiffness, strength, and toughness stemming from a unique microstructure. While recent studies show that silk fibers exhibit plasticity, hysteresis, and recovery under cyclic loading,…
I adapted a model recently introduced in the context of seismic phenomena, to study creep rupture of materials. It consists of linear elastic fibers that interact in an equal load sharing scheme, complemented with a local viscoelastic…
The stochastic variations in the structural properties of thin fiber networks govern to a great extent their mechanical performance. To assess the influence of local structural variability on the local strain and mechanical response of the…
Widespread processes in nature and technology are governed by the dynamical transition whereby a material in an initially solid-like state then yields plastically. Major unresolved questions concern whether any material will yield smoothly…
We study the creep rupture of bundles of viscoelastic fibers occurring under uniaxial constant tensile loading. A novel fiber bundle model is introduced which combines the viscoelastic constitutive behaviour and the strain controlled…
Peritrichous bacteria swim in viscous fluids by rotating multiple helical flagellar filaments. As the bacterium swims forward, all its flagella rotate in synchrony behind the cell in a helical bundle. When the bacterium changes its…
Hydrogels have had a profound impact in the fields of tissue engineering, drug delivery, and materials science as a whole. Due to the network architecture of these materials, imbibement with water often results in uniform swelling and…
Thixotropy is a phenomenon related to time dependent change in viscosity in presence or absence of flow. The yield stress, on the other hand, represents the minimum value of stress above which steady flow can be sustained. In addition, the…
The capillary traction of a liquid contact line causes highly localized deformations in soft solids, tremendously slowing down wetting and dewetting dynamics by viscoelastic braking. Enforcing nonetheless large velocities leads to the…
Rigidity is an emergent property of materials - it is not a feature of individual components that comprise the structure, but instead arises from interactions between many constituent parts. Recently, it has been recognized that…
How friction affects adhesion is addressed. The problem is considered in the context of a very stiff sphere adhering to a compliant, isotropic, linear elastic substrate, and experiencing adhesion and frictional slip relative to each other.…
This paper presents a multi-scale approach to predict the effective hygro-mechanical behaviour of paper sheets based on the properties of the underlying fibrous network. Despite the vast amount of literature on paper hygro-expansion, the…
We determine the effective behavior of a class of composites in finite-strain crystal plasticity, based on a variational model for materials made of fine parallel layers of two types. While one component is completely rigid in the sense…
Conventional slippery surfaces show isotropic drop mobility in all directions, but many applications require directional drop motion along a particular path only. In previous studies, researchers used topographic substrates, together with…
Many geologic materials have a composite structure, in which macroscopic mechanical behavior is determined by the properties, shape, and heterogeneous distribution of individual constituents. In particular, sedimentary rocks commonly…
The mechanical response of yield-stress materials below the yield point remains a subject of debate. Two of the most widely used constitutive models for these materials offer fundamentally conflicting views: one permits plastic flow at all…
We study the failure properties of fiber bundles when continuous rupture goes on due to the application of external load on the bundles. We take the two extreme models: equal load sharing model (democratic fiber bundles) and local load…
High-throughput characterization of architected materials across a wide range of length scales enables rapid screening of topologies for engineering applications. Scaled-down specimens manufactured and evaluated in laboratory environments…
In this work, we analyse the stick-slip motion of a soft elastomeric block on a smooth, hard surface under the application of shear, which is induced by a puller moving at a steady velocity. The frictional stress is generated by make-break…
Mechanical cues like the rigidity of the substrate are main determinants for the decision making of adherent cells. Here we use a mechano-chemical model to predict the cellular response to varying substrate stiffness. The model equations…