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The mechanical properties of a disordered heterogeneous medium depend, in general, on a complex interplay between multiple length scales. Connecting local interactions to macroscopic observables, such as stiffness or fracture, is thus…
We investigate the response of a system of hard spheres to two classes of perturbations over a range of densities spanning the fluid, crystalline, and glassy regimes within a molecular dynamics framework. Firstly, we consider the relaxation…
We study the elastic response of concentrated suspensions of rigid wire frame particles to a step strain. These particles are constructed from infinitely thin, rigid rods of length $L$. We specifically compare straight rod-like particles to…
Under an applied external load the global load-sharing fiber bundle model, with individual fiber strength thresholds sampled randomly from a probability distribution, will relax to an equilibrium state, or to complete bundle breakdown. The…
Constitutive equations are derived for the time-dependent behavior of particle-reinforced elastomers at isothermal loading with finite strains. A rubbery polymer is modelled as a network of macromolecules bridged by junctions which can slip…
Amorphous elastomers exhibit significant rate-stiffening and unique viscous flow characteristics across a wide range of strain rates, often undergoing glass transition above a strain rate threshold. We have developed a…
The effect of ring stiffness and pressure on the glassy dynamics of a thermal assembly of two-dimensional ring polymers is investigated using extensive coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. In all cases, dynamical slowing down is…
Confined geometries offer useful and experimentally amenable mechanical testing arrangements in which to study the molecular and micro-structural processes which govern plastic yield in stress environments dominated by hydrostatic pressure…
Amorphous materials such as metallic, polymeric, and colloidal glasses, exhibit complex preparation-dependent mechanical response to applied shear. We perform numerical simulations to investigate the mechanical response of binary…
The mechanical non-linear response of dense Brownian suspensions of polymer gel particles is studied experimentally and by means of numerical simulations. It is shown that the response to the application of a constant shear rate depends on…
Elastic and dissipative properties of granular assemblies under uniaxial compression are studied both experimentally and by numerical simulations. Following a novel compaction procedure at varying oscillatory pressures, the stress response…
The shear response of soft solids can be modeled with linear elasticity, provided the forcing is slow and weak. Both of these approximations must break down when the material loses rigidity, such as in foams and emulsions at their…
3D Computer simulations and experiments are employed to study random packings of compressible spherical grains under external confining stress. Of particular interest is the rigid ball limit, which we describe as a continuous transition in…
We report observations of unusal \emph{first} plastic events in silica and metallic glasses in the shear startup regime at applied strain two orders of magnitude smaller than yield strain. The (non-Affine) particle displacement field during…
We study the mechanics of a reversible decohesion (unzipping) of an elastic layer subjected to quasi-static end-point loading. At the micro level the system is simulated by an elastic chain of particles interacting with a rigid foundation…
Soft living tissues like cartilage can be considered as biphasic materials comprised of a fibrous complex biopolymer network and a viscous background liquid. Here, we show by a combination of experiment and theoretical analysis that both…
Constitutive equations are derived for the viscoelastic behavior of filled elastomers at isothermal loading with finite strains. A particle-reinforced rubber is thought of as a composite where regions with low concentrations of junctions…
Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate heterogeneous dynamics in amorphous glassy materials under oscillatory shear strain. We consider three-dimensional binary Lennard-Jones mixture well below the glass transition…
The stress-strain relations and the yield behavior of model glass (a 80:20 binary Lennard-Jones mixture) is studied by means of MD simulations. First, a thorough analysis of the static yield stress is presented via simulations under imposed…
We study the effect of physical aging on the mechanical properties of a model polymer glass using molecular dynamics simulations. The creep compliance is determined simultaneously with the structural relaxation under a constant uniaxial…