Related papers: Rigidity and mechanical response in biological str…
The hydrodynamic slippage at a solid-liquid interface is currently at the center of our understanding of fluid mechanics. For hundreds of years this science has relied upon no-slip boundary conditions at the solid-liquid interface that has…
Just like power, water, and transportation systems, wireless networks are a crucial societal infrastructure. As natural and human-induced disruptions continue to grow, wireless networks must be resilient. This requires them to withstand and…
The rigid to floppy transitions and the associated intermediate phase in glasses are studied in the case where the local structure is not fully determined from the macroscopic concentration. The approach uses size increasing cluster…
As we enter the age of designer matter - where objects can morph and change shape on command - what tools do we need to create shape-shifting structures? At the heart of an elastic deformation is the combination of dilation and distortion,…
Antifragility characterizes the benefit of a dynamical system derived from the variability in environmental perturbations. Antifragility carries a precise definition that quantifies a system's output response to input variability. Systems…
Plasticity in soft amorphous materials typically involves collective deformation patterns that emerge upon intense shearing. The microscopic basis of amorphous plasticity has been commonly established through the notion of "Eshelby"-type…
Systems that exhibit complex behaviours are often found in a particular dynamical condition, poised between order and disorder. This observation is at the core of the so-called criticality hypothesis, which states that systems in a…
Biological and robotic grasp and manipulation are undeniably similar at the level of mechanical task performance. However, their underlying fundamental biological vs. engineering mechanisms are, by definition, dramatically different and can…
Complex networks are ubiquitous: a cell, the human brain, a group of people and the Internet are all examples of interconnected many-body systems characterized by macroscopic properties that cannot be trivially deduced from those of their…
Random fiber networks form the structural foundation of numerous biological tissues and engineered materials. From a mechanics perspective, understanding the structure-function relationships of random fiber networks is particularly…
Understanding and controlling the dynamic interactions between fluid flows and solid materials and structures-a field known as fluid-structure interaction -is central not only to established disciplines such as aerospace and naval…
Understanding the origins of complexity is a fundamental challenge with implications for biological and technological systems. Network theory emerges as a powerful tool to model complex systems. Networks are an intuitive framework to…
Scales engagement can contribute significantly to nonlinear bending behavior of elastic substrates with rigid biomimetic scales. In this letter, we investigate the role of friction in modulating the nonlinearity that arises due to…
Biologists and physicists have a rich tradition of modeling living systems with simple models composed of a few interacting components. Despite the remarkable success of this approach, it remains unclear how to use such finely tuned models…
This discussion paper aims to support the argument process for the need to develop a comprehensive science of resilient robotic autonomy. Resilience and its key characteristics relating to robustness, redundancy, and resourcefulness are…
The ability of cells to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environments is fundamental to a range of cellular behaviours, with substrate stiffness increasingly being found to be a key signalling factor. Although active…
In this paper we will try to provide a formalization of some characteristics of the development of biological systems aiming at the highest level of adequacy: justificative adequacy, that is, not only what we observe (descriptive adequacy)…
A system comprised of an elastic solid and its response to an external random force sequence is shown to behave based on the principles of the theory of algorithmic complexity and randomness. The solid distorts the randomness of an input…
Many soft jammed materials, such as pastes, gels, concentrated emulsions, and suspensions, possess a threshold stress, known as yield stress, that must be exceeded to cause permanent deformation or flow. In rheology, the term plastic flow…
Knitting turns yarn, a 1D material, into a 2D fabric that is flexible, durable [1], and can be patterned to adopt a wide range of 3D geometries [2]. Like other mechanical metamaterials [3], the elasticity of knitted fabrics is an emergent…