Related papers: An Experimental Characterization of Mechanical Lay…
The jamming transition is ubiquitous. It is present in granular matter, colloids, glasses, and many other systems. Yet, it defines a critical point whose properties still need to be fully understood. A major breakthrough came about when the…
4D printing of flat sheets that self-fold into architected 3D structures is a powerful origami-inspired approach for the fabrication of multi-functional devices and metamaterials. The possibility to endow the initially flat sheet with a…
The weak properties in the thickness of the laminates in terms of rigidity, fatigue and impact resistance involve delamination sensitivity for thick structures. This issue has led to the development of three-dimensional (3D) preforms with…
Complex fluids exhibit a variety of exotic flow behaviours under high stresses, such as shear thickening and shear jamming. Rheology is a powerful tool to characterise these flow behaviours over the bulk of the fluid. However, this…
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…
Biomimicry has played a pivotal role in robotics. In contrast to rigid robots, bio-inspired robots exhibit an inherent compliance, facilitating versatile movements and operations in constrained spaces. The robot implementation in…
We have recently developed some simple continuum models of static granular media which display "fragile" behaviour: they predict that the medium is unable to support certain types of infinitesimal load (which we call "incompatible" loads)…
Shape-morphing networks of mesoscale filaments are a common hierarchical feature in biology and hold significant potential for a range of technological applications, from micro-muscles to shape-morphing optical devices. Here, we demonstrate…
Structural hierarchy, in which materials possess distinct features on multiple length scales, is ubiquitous in nature; diverse biological materials, such as bone, cellulose, and muscle, have as many as ten hierarchical levels. Structural…
The recent realization of mixed-dimensional systems of cold atoms has attracted much attention from both experimentalists and theorists. Different effective interactions and novel correlated quantum many-body phases may be engineered in…
A collection of thin structures buckle, bend, and bump into each-other when confined. This contact can lead to the formation of patterns: hair will self-organize in curls; DNA strands will layer into cell nuclei; paper, when crumpled, will…
Natural systems integrate the work of many sub-units (cells) toward a large-scale unified goal (morphological and behavioral), which can counteract the effects of unexpected experiences, damage, or simply changes in tasks demands. In this…
Bio-hybrid systems---close couplings of natural organisms with technology---are high potential and still underexplored. In existing work, robots have mostly influenced group behaviors of animals. We explore the possibilities of mixing…
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…
Legged machines are becoming increasingly agile and adaptive but they have so far lacked the morphological diversity of legged animals, which have been rearranged and reshaped to fill millions of niches. Unlike their biological…
We study experimentally the relaxation towards mechanical equilibrium of a granular pile which has just experienced an avalanche and discuss it in the more general context of the granular jamming transition. Two coexisting dynamics are…
Incremental stiffness characterizes the variation of a material's force response to a small deformation change. Typically materials have an incremental stiffness that is fixed and positive, but recent technologies, such as super-lenses, low…
The spreading behaviour of cohesive sand powder is modelled by Discrete Element Method, and the spreadability and the mechanical jamming are focused. The empty patches and total particle volume of the spread layer are examined, followed by…
Soft modular robots enable more flexibility and safer interaction with the changing environment than traditional robots. However, it has remained challenging to create deformable connectors that can be integrated into soft machines. In this…
The high-pressure compaction of three dimensional granular packings is simulated using a bonded particle model (BPM) to capture linear elastic deformation. In the model, grains are represented by a collection of point particles connected by…