Related papers: Geometry-Driven Mechanical Memory in a Random Fibr…

Many active systems display nematic order, while interacting with their environment. In this work, we show theoretically how environment-stored memory acts an effective external field that aligns active nematics. The coupling to the…

The flow and deformation of macromolecules is ubiquitous in nature and industry, and an understanding of this phenomenon at both macroscopic and microscopic length scales is of fundamental and practical importance. Here we present the…

When light propagates through opaque material, the spatial information it holds becomes scrambled, but not necessarily lost. Two classes of techniques have emerged to recover this information: methods relying on optical memory effects, and…

Many biological materials consist of sparse networks of disordered fibres, embedded in a soft elastic matrix. The interplay between rigid and soft elements in such composite networks leads to mechanical properties that can go far beyond the…

Experiments involving vibrating pastes before drying were performed for the purposes of controlling the crack patterns that appear in the drying process. These experiments revealed a transition in the direction of lamellar cracks from…

The question of how a disordered material's microstructure translates into macroscopic mechanical response is central to understanding and designing materials like pastes, foams and metallic glasses. Here, we examine a 2D soft jammed…

Solids are rigid, which means that when left undisturbed, their structures are nearly static. It follows that these structures depend on history -- but it is surprising that they hold readable memories of past events. Here we review the…

We report detailed theoretical investigations of the micro-mechanics and bulk elastic properties of composites consisting of randomly distributed stiff fibers embedded in an elastic matrix in two and three dimensions. Recent experiments…

Strength, ductility, and failure properties of metals are tailored by plastic deformation routes. Predicting these properties requires modeling of the structural dynamics and stress evolution taking place on several length scales. Progress…

A complete characterization is given of the possible macroscopic deformations of periodic nonlinear affine unimode metamaterials constructed from rigid bars and pivots. The materials are affine in the sense that their macroscopic…

Living soft tissues appear to promote the development and maintenance of a preferred mechanical state within a defined tolerance around a so-called set-point. This phenomenon is often referred to as mechanical homeostasis. In contradiction…

Neural models learn representations of high-dimensional data on low-dimensional manifolds. Multiple factors, including stochasticities in the training process, model architectures, and additional inductive biases, may induce different…

In this work, we investigate the forces acting on a flexible fiber dragged through a granular bed. Using discrete element simulations, we observe that, after a sufficiently large displacement, the system reaches a steady state in which both…

In vivo, eukaryotic cells are embedded in a matrix environment, where they grow and develop. Generally, this extracellular matrix (ECM) is an anisotropic fibrous structure, through which macromolecules and biochemical signaling molecules at…

Shape-programmed sheets morph from one surface into another upon activation by stimuli such as illumination, and have attracted much interest for their potential engineering applications, especially in soft robotics. Complex shape changes…

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…

Many important multi-component crystalline solids undergo mechanochemical spinodal decomposition: a phase transformation in which the compositional redistribution is coupled with structural changes of the crystal, resulting in dynamically…

Magneto-rheological elastomers (MREs) are functional materials that can be actuated by applying an external magnetic field. MREs comprise a composite of hard magnetic particles dispersed into a nonmagnetic elastomeric matrix. By applying a…

We numerically investigate the stress distribution of a paste when an external oscillation is applied. The paste memorizes the oscillation as plastic deformation. Due to the plastic deformation, the residual stress remains after the…

Spatially confined rigid membranes reorganize their morphology in response to the imposed constraints. A crumpled elastic sheet presents a complex pattern of random folds focusing the deformation energy while compressing a membrane resting…