Related papers: Self-organized adaptive branching in frangible mat…
The macroscopic behaviour of active matter arises from nonequilibrium microscopic processes. In soft materials, active stresses typically drive macroscopic shape changes, which in turn alter the geometry constraining the microscopic…
We consider materials whose mechanical integrity is the result of a jamming process. We argue that such media are generically "fragile": unable to support certain types of incremental loading without plastic rearrangement. Fragility is…
Branched flow governs the transition from ballistic to diffusive motion of waves and conservative particle flows in spatially correlated random or complex environments. It occurs in many physical systems from micrometer to interstellar…
We present a sampling-based approach to reasoning about the caging-based manipulation of rigid and a simplified class of deformable 3D objects subject to energy constraints. Towards this end, we propose the notion of soft fixtures extending…
Under inhomogeneous flow, dense suspensions exhibit complex behaviour that violates the conventional homogenous rheology. Specifically, one finds flowing regions with a macroscopic friction coefficient below the yielding criterion, and…
Contact involving soft materials often combines dry adhesion, sliding friction, and large deformations. At the local level, these three aspects are rarely captured simultaneously, but included in the theoretical models by Mergel et al.…
We investigate the structural organization of the point-to-point electric, diffusive or hydraulic transport in complex scale-free networks. The random choice of two nodes, a source and a drain, to which a potential difference is applied,…
We investigate the fragmentation process of solid materials with crystalline and amorphous phases using the discrete element method. Damage initiates inside spherical samples above the contact zone in a region where the circumferential…
Extreme localization of damage in conventional brittle materials is the source of a host of undesirable effects. We show how artificially engineered metamaterials with all brittle constituents can be designed to ensure that every breakable…
The precise mechanisms underlying the failure of multi-phase materials may be strongly dependent on the material's microstructural morphology. Micromechanical modeling has provided much insight into this dependence, but uncertainties remain…
A field theory is presented for predicting damage and fracture in quasi-brittle materials. The approach taken here is new and blends a non-local constitutive law with a two-point phase field. In this formulation, the material displacement…
A flexible membrane deforming its shape in time can self-propel in a viscous fluid. Alternatively, if the membrane is anchored, its deformation will lead to fluid transport. Past work in this area focused on situations where the deformation…
We develop a new framework for branched transport between probability measures which are allowed to vary in time. This framework can be used to model problems where the underlying transportation network displays a branched structure, but…
Fracture propagation is highly sensitive to the conditions at the crack tip. In heterogeneous materials, microscale obstacles can cause propagation instabilities. Macroscopic heterogeneities modify the stress field over scales larger than…
We model flow and transport in three-dimensional fracture networks with varying degrees of fracture-to-fracture aperture/permeability heterogeneity and network density to show how changes in these properties can cause the emergence of…
The problem of dynamic symmetric branching of an initial single brittle crack propagating at a given speed under plane loading conditions is studied within a continuum mechanics approach. Griffith's energy criterion and the principle of…
This paper presents a novel framework for modeling and conditional generation of 3D articulated objects. Troubled by flexibility-quality tradeoffs, existing methods are often limited to using predefined structures or retrieving shapes from…
Soft membranes are commonly employed in shape-morphing applications, where the material is programmed to achieve a target shape upon activation by an external trigger, and as coating layers that alter the surface characteristics of bulk…
Living cells inherently reorganize their intracellular structures in response to mechanical cues from their environment. Among these responses, the formation of actin-based stress fibers exhibits a series of structural transitions depending…
Predicting the large-amplitude deformations of thin elastic sheets is difficult due to the complications of self-contact, geometric nonlinearities, and a multitude of low-lying energy states. We study a simple two-dimensional setting where…