Related papers: Invariant fractocohesive length in thermally aged …
We investigate the influence of fractal structure on material properties. We calculate the statistical correlation functions of fractal media defined by level-cut Gaussian random fields. This allows the modeling of both surface fractal and…
We study the thermal effects on the frictional properties of atomically thin sheets. We simulate a simple model based on the Prandtl-Tomlinson model that reproduces the layer dependence of friction and strengthening effects seen in AFM…
Failure in brittle materials under dynamic loading conditions is a result of the propagation and coalescence of microcracks. Simulating this mechanism at the continuum level is computationally expensive or, in some cases, intractable. The…
Elastocaloric cooling has been identified as a promising alternative to high global warming potential vapor compression cooling. Two key bottlenecks to adoption are the need for bulky/expensive actuators to provide sufficient uniaxial…
Using Ba(Fe$_{0.975}$Co$_{0.025}$)$_2$As$_{2}$ as an exemplar material exhibiting second order electronic-nematic and antiferromagnetic transitions, we present measurements that reveal anomalies in the elastoresistance $\left(\frac{\partial…
Dynamics of a polymer chain in solution gets significantly affected by the temperature and the frictional forces arising due to solvent viscosity. Here, using an explicit solvent framework for polymer simulation with the liberty to tune the…
Using a multi-resolution technique, we analyze large in-plane fracture fronts moving slowly between two sintered Plexiglas plates. We find that the roughness of the front exhibits two distinct regimes separated by a crossover length scale…
Nearly three decades ago, the field of mechanics was cautioned of the obscure nature of cavitation processes in soft materials [Gent, A.N., 1990. Cavitation in rubber: a cautionary tale. Rubber Chemistry and Technology, 63(3)]. Since then,…
We simultaneously measure the static friction and the real area of contact between two solid bodies. Under static conditions both quantities increase logarithmically in time, a phenomenon coined aging. Indeed, frictional strength is…
Predicting the macroscopic mechanical behavior of polymeric materials from the micro-structural features has remained a challenge for decades. Existing theoretical models often fail to accurately capture the experimental data, due to…
The dewetting dynamics of ultrathin polymer films, e.g. in the model system of polystyrene on a polydimethylsiloxane-covered substrate, exhibits interesting behavior like a fast decay of the dewetting velocity and a maximum in the width of…
Superlattice (SL) thin films composed of refractory ceramics unite extremely high hardness and enhanced fracture toughness; a material combination often being mutually exclusive. While the hardness enhancement obtained whentwo materials…
Glasses are mechanically rigid, still undergo structural relaxation which changes their properties and affects potential technological applications. Understanding the underlying physical processes is a problem of broad theoretical and…
The thermal expansion coefficients, structure factors, and viscosities of twenty-five equilibrium and supercooled metallic liquids have been measured using an electrostatic levitation (ESL) facility. The structure factor was measured at the…
We address the system-size dependence of typical plastic flow events when an amorphous solid is put under a fixed external strain rate at a finite temperature. For system sizes that are accessible to numerical simulations at reasonable…
Physical aging in polymers is a fundamental yet poorly understood phenomenon, as diverse macromolecular systems exhibit remarkably similar slow dynamics. Through molecular dynamics simulations of physically crosslinked networks composed of…
There is an ever-growing need for predictive models for the elasto-viscoplastic deformation of solids. Our goal in this paper is to incorporate recently developed out-of-equilibrium statistical concepts into a thermodynamically consistent,…
An increase of static friction during stationary contacts of two solids due to interfacial chemical bonding has been reported in multiple experiments. However, the physics underlying such frictional aging is still not fully understood…
Natural hard composites like human bone possess a combination of strength and toughness that exceeds that of their constituents and of many engineered composites. This augmentation is attributed to their complex hierarchical structure,…
The fatigue fracture surfaces of a metallic alloy, and the stress corrosion fracture surfaces of glass are investigated as a function of crack velocity. It is shown that in both cases, there are two fracture regimes, which have a well…