Related papers: Piercing soft solids: A mechanical theory for need…
We study the indentation of ultrathin elastic sheets clamped to the edge of a circular hole. This classical setup has received considerable attention lately, being used by various experimental groups as a probe to measure the surface…
Soft condensed matter physics is the study of materials, such as fluids, liquid crystals, polymers, colloids, and emulsions, that are ``soft" to the touch. This article will review some properties, such as the dominance of entropy, that are…
Johnson-Kendall-Robert (JKR) theory is the basis of modern contact mechanics. It describes how two deformable objects adhere together, driven by adhesion energy and opposed by elasticity. However, it does not include solid surface tension,…
The surface tension of compliant materials such as gels provides resistance to deformation in addition to and sometimes surpassing that due to elasticity. This article studies how surface tension changes the contact mechanics of a small…
The drag force exerted on an object intruding into granular media can depend on the object's velocity as well as the depth penetrated. We report on intrusion experiments at constant speed over four orders in magnitude together with…
Adhesion hysteresis can be caused by elastic instabilities that are triggered by surface roughness or chemical heterogeneity. However, the role of these instabilities in adhesion hysteresis remains poorly understood because we lack…
Using a geometric formalism of elasticity theory we develop a systematic theoretical method for controlling and manipulating the mechanical response of slender solids to external loads. We formally express global mechanical properties…
We derive a mixture theory-based mathematical model of the degradation of a poroelastic solid immersed in a fluid bath. The evolution of the solid's mechanical and transport properties are also modeled. The inspiration for the model is the…
The microcanonical dynamics of an ensemble of random magnetic dipoles in a needle has been investigated. Analyzing magnetic reversal times, a transition between a chaotic paramagnetic phase and an integrable ferromagnetic phase has been…
Crack growth is the basic mechanism leading to the failure of brittle materials. Engineering addresses this problem within the framework of continuum mechanics, which links deterministically the crack motion to the applied loading. Such an…
The onset of frictional sliding between contacting bodies under shear load is nucleated by the quasi-static growth of localized slip patches. After reaching a certain critical size, these patches become unstable and continue growing…
With the rapid advent of biomedical and biotechnological innovations, a deep understanding of the nature of interaction between nanomaterials and cell membranes, tissues, and organs, has become increasingly important. Active penetration of…
Indentation is a common experimental technique to study the mechanics of polymeric materials. The main advantage of using indentation is because this provides a direct correlation between the microstructure and the small-scale mechanical…
We investigate the mechanics of bistable, hard-magnetic, elastic beams, combining experiments, finite element modeling (FEM), and a reduced-order theory. The beam is made of a hard magneto-rheological elastomer, comprising two segments with…
We study the influence of cell-level mechanical heterogeneity in epithelial tissues using a vertex-based model. Heterogeneity in single cell stiffness is introduced as a quenched random variable in the preferred shape index($p_0$) for each…
Percolation of fine particles (fines) in a static bed of larger particles is central to many industrial and natural processes. Non-cohesive fines either pass through the bed or become trapped depending on multiple factors including particle…
Nucleation of a solid in solid is initiated by the appearance of distinct dynamical heterogeneities, consisting of `active' particles whose trajectories show an abrupt transition from ballistic to diffusive, coincident with the…
Induced by proteins within the cell membrane or by differential growth, heating, or swelling, spontaneous curvatures can drastically affect the morphology of thin bodies and induce mechanical instabilities. Yet, the interaction of…
This is an analytical study of pinning and spontaneous vortex phase is a system consisting of a superconducting thin film pierced by a long ferromagnetic columnar defect of finite radius $R$. The magnetic fields, screening currents, energy…
Snap-through occurs in elastic structures when a stable equilibrium configuration becomes unstable, resulting in rapid motion towards a new and distinct stable state. While static analyses of snap-through are well documented, the dynamics…