Related papers: Revisiting the strain-induced softening behaviour …
We study computationally the creep and yielding of athermal gels and fibre network materials under a constant imposed shear stress, within a minimal model of interconnected filaments with central forces in $d=2$ spatial dimensions. Each…
The mechanics of single-chain stretching and rupture are central to understanding the resilience of biological polymers and designing strong and tough soft materials such as double-network gels and multi-network elastomers. In this work, we…
In this work, we investigate the transient rheological behavior of two soft glassy materials: a clay dispersion and a silica gel, emphasizing their unconventional shear stress build-up behavior under conditions of constant imposed strain.…
Natural rubber is obtained by processing natural rubber latex, a liquid colloidal suspension that rapidly gels after exudation from the tree. We prepared such gels by acidification, in a large range of particle volume fractions, and…
Disordered soft materials, such as fibrous networks in biological contexts exhibit a nonlinear elastic response. We study such nonlinear behavior with a minimal model for networks on lattice geometries with simple Hookian elements with…
Hydrogel diffusiophoresis is the deformation of a hydrogel due to a solute gradient that leads to a gradient of pairwise interactions between the solute particles and the hydrogel polymers to trigger osmotic flux. Unlike typical osmosis, it…
In this work, we systematically investigate for the first time the nature of stress correlations in soft colloidal gel materials which support tensile and compressive forces as well as finite rolling torque, as a function of system…
We use nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations to verify recent tube-model predictions that associative polymer networks exhibit broad stretch fluctuations during elongational flow. Simulations further show that these fluctuating…
Collagen is the most abundant extracellular-matrix protein in mammals and the main structural and load-bearing element of connective tissues. Collagen networks show remarkable strain-stiffening properties which tune the mechanical functions…
Dense suspensions of hard particles in a liquid can exhibit strikingly counter-intuitive behavior, such as discontinuous shear thickening (DST) [1-8] and reversible shear jamming (SJ) into a state with finite yield stress [9-13]. Recent…
The concept of network immunity, i.e., the robustness of the network connectivity after a random deletion of edges or vertices, has been investigated in biological or communication networks. We apply this concept to a self-assembling,…
The structural arrest of a polymeric suspension might be driven by an increase of the cross--linker concentration, that drives the gel transition, as well as by an increase of the polymer density, that induces a glass transition. These…
A constitutive model is developed for the mechanical response of elastomers at finite strains. A polymer is treated as a network of linear chains linked by permanent (chemical crosslinks) and temporary (entanglements and van der Waals…
We show that gels formed by arrested spinodal decomposition of protein solutions exhibit elastic properties in two distinct frequency domains, both elastic moduli exhibiting a remarkably strong dependence on volume fraction. Considering the…
In this work, we address issues pertinent to the understanding of the structural and electronic properties of Si_{1-x} Ge_{x}alloys, namely, (i) how does the lattice constant mismatch between bulk Si and bulk Ge manifests itself in the…
Graphene is the extreme material for molecular sensory and hydrogen storage applications because of its two-dimensional geometry and unique structure-property relationship. In this Letter, hydrogenation of graphene is discussed in the…
Granular materials are ubiquitous in nature and industry; their mechanical behavior has been of academic and engineering interest for centuries. One of the reasons for their rather complex mechanical behavior is that stresses exerted on a…
We have analyzed the equilibrium response of chain molecules to stretching. For a homogeneous sequence of monomers, the induced transition from compact globule to extended coil below the $\theta$-temperature is predicted to be sharp. For…
Spatial heterogeneity in the elastic properties of soft random solids is investigated via a two-pronged approach. First, a nonlocal phenomenological model for the elastic free energy is examined. This features a quenched random kernel,…
We performed parallel measurements of heat effects and shear modulus relaxation for glassy Te$_{75}$Ge$_{15}$Ga$_{10}$ taken as a representative of practically important non-metallic glasses with covalent bonding. It is shown that the heat…