Related papers: Tuning load redistribution and damage near heterog…
The structure of real-world multilayer infrastructure systems usually exhibits anisotropy due to constraints of the embedding space. For example, geographical features like mountains, rivers and shores influence the architecture of critical…
A heterogeneous quasi-brittle granular material can withstand certain levels of internal damage before global failure. This robustness depends not just on the bond strengths but also on the topology and redundancy of the bonded contact…
Engineering wear models are generally empirical and lack connections to the physical processes of debris generation at the nanoscale to microscale. Here, we thus analyze wear particle formation for sliding interfaces in dry contact with…
Structural hierarchy, in which materials possess distinct features on multiple length scales, is ubiquitous in nature; diverse biological materials, such as bone, cellulose, and muscle, have as many as ten hierarchical levels. Structural…
The thermoelectric power factor of hierarchically nanostructured materials is investigated using the nonequilibrium Greens function method for quantum transport, including interactions of electrons with acoustic and optical phonons. We…
Fracture propagation is highly sensitive to the conditions at the crack tip. In heterogeneous materials, microscale obstacles can cause propagation instabilities. Macroscopic heterogeneities modify the stress field over scales larger than…
Volume alteration in solid materials is a common cause of material failure. Here we investigate the crack formation in thin elastic layers attached to a substrate. We show that small variations in the volume contraction and substrate…
The roughness properties of two-dimensional fracture surfaces as created by the slow failure of random fuse networks are considered and compared to yield surfaces of perfect plasticity with similar disorder. By studying systems up to a…
The dynamical properties and mechanical functions of amorphous materials are governed by their microscopic structures, particularly the elasticity of the interaction networks, which is generally complicated by structural heterogeneity. This…
Long range order and symmetry in heterogeneous materials architected on crystal lattices lead to elastic and inelastic anisotropies and thus limit mechanical functionalities in particular crystallographic directions. Here, we present a…
We discuss the relevance of methods of graph theory for the study of damage in simple model materials described by the random fuse model. While such methods are not commonly used when dealing with regular random lattices, which mimic…
Materials with network-like microstructure, including polymers, are the backbone for many natural and human-made materials such as gels, biological tissues, metamaterials, and rubbers. Fracture processes in these networked materials are…
Creep failure of hierarchical materials is investigated by simulation of beam network models. Such models are idealizations of hierarchical fibrous materials where bundles of load-carrying fibers are held together by multi-level…
Highly-deformable materials, from synthetic hydrogels to biological tissues, are becoming increasingly important from both fundamental and practical perspectives. Their mechanical behaviors, in particular the dynamics of crack propagation…
Composite materials with different microstructural material symmetries are common in engineering applications where grain structure, alloying and particle/fiber packing are optimized via controlled manufacturing. In fact these…
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…
Heterogeneous materials are often organized in a hierarchical manner, where a basic unit is repeated over multiple scales.The structure then acquires a self-similar pattern. Examples of such structure are found in various biological and…
Multi-phase materials, such as composite materials, exhibit multiple competing failure mechanisms during the growth of a macroscopic defect. For the simulation of the overall fracture process in such materials, we develop a two-phase spring…
The effective adhesive properties of heterogeneous thin films are characterized through a combined experimental and theoretical investigation. By bridging scales, we show how variations of elastic or adhesive properties at the microscale…
Cell division and death can be regulated by the mechanical forces within a tissue. We study the consequences for the stability and roughness of a propagating interface, by analysing a model of mechanically-regulated tissue growth in the…