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

Architected metamaterials such as foams and lattices exhibit a wide range of properties governed by microstructural instabilities and emerging phase transformations. Their macroscopic response--including energy dissipation during impact,…

We investigate the dissipative mechanisms exhibited by creased material sheets when subjected to mechanical loading, which comes in the form of plasticity and relaxation phenomena within the creases. After demonstrating that plasticity…

Structures with artificial mechanical properties, often called mechanical metamaterials, exhibit divergent yet tunable performance. Various types of mechanical metamaterials have been proposed, which harness light or magnetic interactions,…

Surface roughness emerges naturally during mechanical removal of material, fracture, chemical deposition, plastic deformation, indentation, and other processes. Here, we use continuum simulations to show how roughness which is neither…

Stress propagation in nonlinear media is crucial in cell biology, where molecular motors exert anisotropic force dipoles on the fibrous cytoskeleton. While the force dipoles can be either contractile or expansile, a medium made of fibers…

We describe a combined experimental and theoretical investigation of shape-morphing structures assembled by actuating composite (Janus) fibers, taking into account multiple relevant factors affecting shape transformations, such as strain…

Wrinkling is the phenomenon of out-of-plane deformation patterns in thin walled structures, as a result of a local compressive (internal) loads in combination with a large membrane stiffness and a small but non-zero bending stiffness.…

Compression of an adsorbed polymer layer distorts its relaxed structure. Surface force measurements from different laboratories show that the return to this relaxed structure after the compression is released can be slowed to the scale of…

Flexible mechanical metamaterials possess repeating structural motifs that imbue them with novel, exciting properties including programmability, anomalous elastic moduli and nonlinear and robust response. We address such structures via…

Soft and biological matter come in a variety of shapes and geometries. When soft surfaces that do not fit into each other due to a mismatch in Gaussian curvatures form an interface, beautiful geometry-induced patterns emerge. In this paper,…

Objective: We confirm that alteration of a neuron structure can induce abnormalities in signal propagation for nervous systems, as observed in brain damage. Here, we investigate the effects of geometrical changes and damage of a neuron…

We discuss the plastic behavior of an amorphous matrix reinforced by hard particles. A mesoscopic depinning-like model accounting for Eshelby elastic interactions is implemented. Only the effect of a plastic disorder is considered.…

Vertex Models, as used to describe cellular tissue, have an energy controlled by deviations of each cell area and perimeter from target values. The constrained nonlinear relation between area and perimeter leads to new mechanical response.…

We present an analytical theory for heteropolymer deformation, as exemplified experimentally by stretching of single protein molecules. Using a mean-field replica theory, we determine phase diagrams for stress-induced unfolding of typical…

Living organisms can demonstrate highly adaptable and sophisticated responses using memory resulting from repeated exposure to external conditions or training. However, realizing similar adaptability in mechanical responses in inanimate,…

Mechanical metamaterials are architected manmade materials that allow for unique behaviors not observed in nature, making them promising candidates for a wide range of applications. Existing metamaterials lack tunability as their properties…

Inelastic mechanical responses in solids, such as plasticity, damage and crack initiation, are typically modeled in constitutive ways that display microstructural and loading dependence. Nevertheless, {linear} elasticity at infinitesimal…

Architected materials achieve unique mechanical properties through precisely engineered microstructures that minimize material usage. However, a key challenge of low-density materials is balancing high stiffness with stable deformability up…

Soft, disordered, micro-structured materials are ubiquitous in nature and industry, and are different from ordinary fluids or solids, with unusual, interesting static and flow properties. The transition from fluid to solid -at the so-called…

Microstructural evolution in structural materials is known to occur in response to mechanical loading and can often accommodate substantial plastic deformation through the coupled motion of grain boundaries (GBs). This can produce desirable…