Related papers: Augmented snap-through instability of folded strip…

Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…

Motivated by observations of snap-through phenomena in buckled elastic strips subject to clamping and lateral end translations, we experimentally explore the multi-stability and bifurcations of thin bands of various widths and compare these…

Disordered mechanical systems can deform along a network of pathways that branch and recombine at special configurations called bifurcation points. Multiple pathways are accessible from these bifurcation points; consequently, computer-aided…

The formation of periodic wrinkles in soft layered materials due to mechanical instabilities is prevalent in nature and has been proposed for use in multiple applications. However, such phenomena have been explored predominantly in…

We investigate the morphology and mechanics of a naturally curved elastic arch loaded at its center and frictionally supported at both ends on a flat, rigid substrate. Through systematic numerical simulations, we classify the observed…

We study the non-monotonic force-extension behaviour of helical ribbons using a new model for inextensible elastic strips. Unlike previous rod models our model predicts hysteresis behaviour for low-pitch ribbons of arbitrary material…

The presence of current sheet instabilities, such as the tearing mode instability, are needed to account for the observed rate of energy release in solar flares. Insights into these current sheet dynamics can be revealed by the behaviour of…

Granular chain packings exhibit a striking emergent strain-stiffening behavior despite the individual looseness of the constitutive chains. Using indentation experiments on such assemblies, we measure an exponential increase in the…

We employ a recently developed model that allows the study of two-dimensional brittle crack propagation under fixed grip boundary conditions. The crack development highlights the importance of voids which appear ahead of the crack as…

The current study explores the analysis of crack in initially stressed, rotating material strips, drawing insights from singular integral equations. In this work, a self-reinforced material strip with finite thickness and infinite extent,…

Cracks in soft materials exhibit diverse dynamic patterns, involving straight, oscillation, branching, and supershear fracture. Here, we successfully reproduce these crack morphologies in a two-dimensional pre-strained fracture scenario and…

Slender elastic objects such as a column tend to buckle under loads. While static buckling is well understood as a bifurcation problem, the evolution of shapes during dynamic buckling is much harder to study. Elastic rings under normal…

When fast cracks become unstable to microscopic branching (micro-branching), fracture no longer occurs in an effective 2D medium. We follow in-plane crack front dynamics via real-time measurements in brittle gels as micro-branching unfolds…

Grasping, in both biological and engineered mechanisms, can be highly sensitive to the gripper and object morphology, as well as perception, and motion planning. Here we circumvent the need for feedback or precise planning by using an array…

Folding and unfolding of biopolymers are often manipulated in experiment by tuning pH, temperature, single-molecule force or shear field. Here we carry out Brownian dynamics simulations to explore the behavior of a single self-attracting…

Grip, walk, crawl, and jump. Soft robots are integrated functional structures composed of compliant mechanisms, whose activity spans various industrial applications such as surgery, healthcare, surveillance, and even planetary exploration.…

A dynamic crack will travel in a straight path up to a material-dependent critical speed beyond which its path becomes erratic. Predicting this critical speed and discovering the origin of this instability are two outstanding problems in…

We examine the mechanical properties of graphene devices stretched on flexible elastomer substrates. Using atomic force microscopy, transport measurements, and mechanics simulations, we show that micro-rips form in the graphene during the…

We consider the transport of rigid objects with internal structure in a flashing ratchet potential by investigating the overdamped behavior of a rod-like chain of evenly spaced point particles. In 1D, analytical arguments show that the…

We discuss the stick-slip motion of an elastic block sliding along a rigid substrate. We argue that for a given external shear stress this system shows a discontinuous nonequilibrium transition from a uniform stick state to uniform sliding…