Related papers: Harnessing Eversion Buckling for Ideal Omnidirecti…

Wrinkles are often observed on the surfaces of compressed soft materials in nature. In the past few decades, the fascinating surface patterns have been studied extensively by using the linear bifurcation analysis under plane strain. The…

Self-folding is an emerging paradigm for the inverse design of three-dimensional structures. While most efforts have concentrated on the shape of the net, our approach introduces a new design dimension-bond specificity between the edges. We…

A highly deformable rod, modelled as the extensible elastica, is connected to a movable clamp at one end and to a pin sliding along a frictionless curved profile at the other. Bifurcation analysis shows that axial compliance provides a…

In a recent feature article in this journal, co-authored by Gert van der Heijden, I described the static-dynamic analogy and its role in understanding the localized post-buckling of shell-like structures, looking exclusively at integrable…

Phosphorene has been rediscovered recently, establishing itself as one of the most promising two dimensional group-V elemental monolayers with direct band gap, high carrier mobility, and anisotropic electronic properties. In this letter,…

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,…

We propose a one-dimensional, nonconvex elastic constitutive model with higher gradients that can predict spontaneous fracture at a critical load via a bifurcation analysis. It overcomes the problem of discontinuous deformations without…

Damping mechanical resonances is a formidable challenge in an increasing number of applications. Many of the passive damping methods rely on using low stiffness dissipative elements, complex mechanical structures or electrical systems,…

Buckling is one of the most common phenomena in atomic-thick layered structures like graphene. While the buckling phenomenon usually causes disaster for most nano-devices, we illustrate one positive application of the buckled graphene for…

Shell buckling is central in many biological structures and advanced functional materials, even if, traditionally, this elastic instability has been regarded as a catastrophic phenomenon to be avoided for engineering structures. Either way,…

From cell development to space rockets, the mechanical stability of thin shells is crucial across many industrial and natural processes. However, predicting shells' failure properties remains an open challenge, owing to their sensitivity to…

Curvature and mechanics are intimately connected for thin materials, and this coupling between geometry and physical properties is readily seen in folded structures from intestinal villi and pollen grains, to wrinkled membranes and…

Modern experimental methods enable the creation of self-assembly building blocks with tunable interactions, but optimally exploiting this tunability for the self-assembly of desired structures remains an important challenge. Many studies of…

Metasurface based super absorbers exhibit near unity absorbance. While the absorption peak can be tuned by the geometry/size of the sub-wavelength resonator, broadband absorption can be obtained by placing multiple resonators of various…

Impedance mismatch between free space and absorptive materials is a fundamental issue plaguing the pursue of high-efficiency light absorption. In this work, we design and numerically demonstrate a type of non-resonant impedance-matched…

Bifurcation of an elastic structure crucially depends on the curvature of the constraints against which the ends of the structure are prescribed to move, an effect which deserves more attention than it has received so far. In fact, we show…

Instability patterns of rolling up a sleeve appear more intricate than the ones of walking over a rug on floor, both characterized as uniaxially compressed soft-film/stiff-substrate systems. This can be explained by curvature effects. To…

Double-clamped bistable buckled beams, as the most elegant bistable mechanisms, demonstrate great versatility in various fields, such as robotics, energy harvesting, and MEMS. However, their design is always hindered by time-consuming and…

The bistability of embedded elements provides a natural route through which to introduce reprogrammability to elastic meta-materials. One example of this is the soft morphable sheet, in which bistable elements that can be snapped up or…

Harnessing the rich nonlinear dynamics of highly-deformable materials has the potential to unlock the next generation of functional smart materials and devices. However, unlocking such potential requires effective strategies to spatially…