Related papers: Using the force landscape of an active solid to pr…
Internal activity can fundamentally reshape the mechanical behavior of solids, yet its role in softening and failure remains incompletely understood. In this study, we investigate spontaneous deformations in activated solids via non-affine…
Dense assemblies of self-propelled particles undergo a nonequilibrium form of glassy dynamics. Physical intuition suggests that increasing departure from equilibrium due to active forces fluidifies a glassy system. We falsify this belief by…
A field theory is presented for predicting damage and fracture in quasi brittle materials incorporating effects of irreversible (plastic) deformation as well as elastic moduli that soften with damage. The new observation made here is that…
Active solids such as cell collectives, colloidal clusters, and active metamaterials exhibit diverse collective phenomena, ranging from rigid body motion to shape-changing mechanisms. The nonlinear dynamics of such active materials remains…
We investigate mathematical properties of the system of nonlinear partial differential equations that describe, under certain simplifying assumptions, evolutionary processes in water-saturated granular materials. The unconsolidated solid…
External fields can decidedly alter the free energy landscape of soft materials and can be exploited as a powerful tool for the assembly of targeted nanostructures and colloidal materials. Here, we use computer simulations to demonstrate…
Active dynamic processes of cells are largely driven by the cytoskeleton, a complex and adaptable semiflexible polymer network, motorized by mechanoenzymes. Small dimensions, confined geome- tries and hierarchical structures make it…
The field of active nematics has traditionally employed descriptions based on dipolar activity, with interactions that align along a single axis. However, it has been theoretically predicted that interactions with a substrate, prevalent in…
In amorphous solids subject to shear or thermal excitation, so-called structural indicators have been developed that predict locations of future plasticity or particle rearrangements. An open question is whether similar tools can be used in…
We present a method for computing locally varying nonlinear mechanical properties in particle simulations of amorphous solids. Plastic rearrangements outside a probed region are suppressed by introducing an external field that directly…
When an amorphous solid is deformed homogeneously, the response exhibits heterogeneous plastic instabilities with localized cooperative rearrangement of cluster of particles. The heterogeneous behavior plays an important role in deciding…
In active matter systems, deformable boundaries provide a mechanism to organize internal active stresses and perform work on the external environment. To study a minimal model of such a system, we perform particle-based simulations of an…
Increasing evidence suggests that active matter exhibits instances of mixed symmetry that cannot be fully described by either polar or nematic formalism. Here, we introduce a minimal model that integrates self-propulsion into the active…
Low-energy excitations play a key role in all condensed-matter systems, yet there is limited understanding of their nature in glasses, where they correspond to local rearrangements of groups of particles. Here we introduce an algorithm to…
We develop a new method to isolate localized defects from extended vibrational modes in disordered solids. This method augments particle interactions with an artificial potential that acts as a high-pass filter: it preserves small-scale…
The growth of multicomponent structures in simulations and experiments often results in kinetically trapped, nonequilibrium objects. In such cases we have no general theoretical framework for predicting the outcome of the growth process.…
The elastic behavior of materials operating in the linear regime is constrained, by definition, to operations that are linear in the imposed deformation. Though the nonlinear regime holds promise for new functionality, the design in this…
Mechanical deformation of amorphous solids can be described as consisting of an elastic part in which the stress increases linearly with strain, up to a yield point at which the solid either fractures or starts deforming plastically. It is…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…
Near-critical behavior of the free surface of an ideally conducting liquid in an external electric field is considered. Based on an analysis of three-wave processes using the method of integral estimations, sufficient criteria for hard…