Related papers: Elasticity tunes mechanical stress localization ar…
Two approaches to incorporate heterogeneity in discrete models are compared. In the first, standard approach, the heterogeneity is dictated by geometrical structure of the discrete system. In the second approach, the heterogeneity is…
Architected materials that exploit buckling instabilities to reversibly trap energy have been shown to be effective for impact protection. The energy-absorbing capabilities of these architected materials can be enhanced further by…
The loading of a granular material induces anisotropies of the particle arrangement (fabric) and of the material's strength, incremental stiffness, and permeability. Thirteen measures of fabric anisotropy are developed, which are arranged…
Buckling in compression is the archetype of elastic instability: when compressed along its longest dimension, a thin structure such as a playing card will buckle out-of-plane accommodating the imposed compression without a significant…
Classical elasticity is concerned with bodies that can be modeled as smooth manifolds endowed with a reference metric that represents local equilibrium distances between neighboring material elements. The elastic energy associated with a…
Topological defects in active polar fluids exhibit complex dynamics driven by internally generated stresses, reflecting the deep interplay between topology, flow, and non-equilibrium hydrodynamics. Feedback control offers a powerful means…
Entangled networks are ubiquitous in tissues, polymers, and fabrics. However, their mechanics remain insufficiently understood due to the complexity of the topological constraints at the network level. Here, we develop a mathematical…
We evaluate the effective Hamiltonian governing, at the optically resolved scale, the elastic properties of micro-manipulated membranes. We identify floppy, entropic-tense and stretched-tense regimes, representing different behaviors of the…
Elucidating the interplay of defect and stress at the microscopic level is a fundamental physical problem that has strong connection with materials science. Here, based on the two-dimensional crystal model, we show that the instability mode…
In amorphous solids as in tissues, neighbor exchanges can relax local stresses and allow the material to flow. In this paper, we use an anisotropic vertex model to study T1 rearrangements in polygonal cellular networks. We consider two…
Tuning of active prestress e.g. through activity of molecular motors constitutes a powerful cellular tool to adjust cellular stiffness through nonlinear material properties. Understanding this tool is an important prerequisite for our…
Collective cell migration governs a range of physiological and pathological processes, from tissue morphogenesis to cancer invasion, in which topological defects arise as an inevitable consequence of frequent cellular rearrangement and…
Twisted assemblies of filaments in ropes, cables and bundles are essential structural elements in wide use in macroscopic materials as well as within the cells and tissues of living organisms. We develop the unique, non-linear elastic…
At elevated temperature environments, elastic structures experience a change of the stress-free state of the body that can strongly influence the optimal topology of the structure. This work presents level-set based topology optimization of…
Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…
Liquid shells (e.g. double emulsions, vesicles etc.) are susceptible to interfacial instability and rupturing when driven out of mechanical equilibrium. This poses a significant challenge for the design of liquid shell based micro-machines,…
Active matter often simultaneously exhibits different kinds of orientational order and, in many cases of biological interest, undergoes continuous material renewal. In renewing nematopolar fluids we find stable topological strings,…
In this article, we unravel an intimate relationship between two seemingly unrelated concepts: elasticity, that defines the local relations between stress and strain of deformable bodies, and topology that classifies their global shape.…
The production of mechanical stresses in living organisms largely relies on localized, force-generating active units embedded in filamentous matrices. Numerical simulations of discrete fiber networks with fixed boundaries have shown that…
Topological defects play a central role in the physics of many materials, including magnets, superconductors and liquid crystals. In active fluids, defects become autonomous particles that spontaneously propel from internal active stresses…