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Differentiable physics modeling combines physics models with gradient-based learning to provide model explicability and data efficiency. It has been used to learn dynamics, solve inverse problems and facilitate design, and is at its…
Soft actuators allow to transform external stimuli to mechanical deformations. Because of their deformational response to external magnetic fields, magnetic gels and elastomers represent ideal candidates for such tasks. Mostly, linear…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
Topological mechanical metamaterials have enabled new ways to control stress and deformation propagation. Exemplified by Maxwell lattices, they have been studied extensively using a linearized formalism. Herein, we study a two-dimensional…
Understanding the coupled thermo-mechanical behaviour of compacted granular beds can benefit various industrial applications, such as pebble bed design in fusion reactors. In this study, a thermo-mechanical discrete element method based on…
When tensioned, ordinary materials expand along the direction of the applied force. Here, we explore network concepts to design metamaterials exhibiting negative compressibility transitions, during which a material undergoes contraction…
A variety of complex fluids consist in soft, round objects (foams, emulsions, assemblies of copolymer micelles or of multilamellar vesicles -- also known as onions). Their dense packing induces a slight deviation from their prefered…
One of the trendsetting themes in soft robotics has been the goal of developing the ultimate universal soft robotic gripper. One that is capable of manipulating items of various shapes, sizes, thicknesses, textures, and weights. All the…
We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the evaporation of particle-laden droplets on a heated surface. The droplets are composed of a Lennard-Jones fluid containing rigid particles which are spherical sections of an atomic lattice,…
Fully harnessing the vast design space enabled by metamaterials to control electromagnetic (EM) fields remains an open problem for researchers. Inverse-design techniques have shown to best exploit the degrees of freedom available in design,…
Parametric 3D models have enabled a wide variety of tasks in computer graphics and vision, such as modeling human bodies, faces, and hands. However, the construction of these parametric models is often tedious, as it requires heavy manual…
Soft electroactive materials can undergo large deformation subjected to either mechanical or electrical stimulus, and hence they can be excellent candidates for designing extremely flexible and adaptive structures and devices. This paper…
Mechanical metamaterials present a promising platform for seemingly impossible mechanics. They often require incompatibility of their elementary building blocks, yet a comprehensive understanding of its role remains elusive. Relying on an…
We perform numerical simulations to study self-assembly of nanoparticles mediated by an elastic planar surface. We show how the nontrivial elastic response to deformations of these surfaces leads to anisotropic interactions between the…
The concept of creating all-mechanical soft microrobotic systems has great potential to address outstanding challenges in biomedical applications, and introduce more sustainable and multifunctional products. To this end, magnetic fields and…
We investigate computational issues in the distributed model Amoebots of programmable matter. In this model, the computational entities, called particles, are anonymous finite-state machines that operate and move on an hexagonal tasselation…
Shape-programmable soft materials that exhibit integrated multifunctional shape manipulations, including reprogrammable, untethered, fast, and reversible shape transformation and locking, are highly desirable for a plethora of applications,…
Small magnetic particles placed in a relatively soft polymer (with elastic modulus E ~ 10-100 kPa) are magnetically soft elastomers. The external magnetic field acts on each particle which leads to microscopic deformation of the material…
While the design of always new metamaterials with exotic static and dynamic properties is attracting deep attention in the last decades, little effort is made to explore their interactions with other materials. This prevents the conception…
Auxiliary nanostructures introduce additional flexibility into optomechanical manipulation schemes. Metamaterials and metasurfaces capable to control electromagnetic interactions at the near-field regions are especially beneficial for…