Related papers: Using the force landscape of an active solid to pr…
We demonstrate that the elasticity of jammed solids is nonlocal. By forcing frictionless soft sphere packings at varying wavelength, we directly access their transverse and longitudinal compliances without resorting to curve fitting. The…
Two classes of non-linear elastic materials are derived via two-dimensional homogenization. These materials are equivalent to a periodic grid of axially-deformable and axially-preloaded structural elements, subject to incremental…
The glass is a disordered solid that processes distinct dynamical and elastic properties compared with crystal. How heterogeneous glassy materials can be and to what extent dynamics is encoded with structure and elasticity are long-standing…
A body immersed in a nematic liquid crystal disturbs the fluid's preferred molecular configuration and increases its stored elastic energy. In an active nematic, the fluid components also generate a stress in the bulk fluid. By introducing…
Active materials are those in which individual, uncoordinated local stresses drive the material out of equilibrium on a global scale. Examples of such assemblies can be seen across scales from schools of fish to the cellular cytoskeleton…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
We study elastic interactions between colloidal particles and deformation landscapes of undulations in a cholesteric liquid crystal under an electric field applied normal to cholesteric layers. The onset of undulation instability is…
Active materials with distinctive nonequilibrium properties have diverse materials science applications. Active systems are common in living matter, such as the filament network in the cell that is activated by molecular motors, and in…
Mechanical properties of disordered materials are governed by their underlying free energy landscape. In contrast to external fields, embedding a small fraction of active particles within a disordered material generates non-equilibrium…
Active cell-junction remodeling is important for tissue morphogenesis, yet its underlying physics is not understood. We study a mechanical model that describes junctions as dynamic active force dipoles. Their instability can trigger cell…
A phenomenological description for active bundles of polar filaments is presented. The activity of the bundle results from crosslinks, that induce relative displacements between the aligned filaments. Our generic description is based on…
Predicting the failure and plasticity of solids remains a longstanding challenge, with broad implications for materials design and functional reliability. Disordered solids like metallic glasses can fail either abruptly or gradually without…
We investigate the effect of an anisotropic substrate on the turbulent dynamics of a simulated two dimensional active nematic. This is introduced as an anisotropic friction and an effective anisotropic viscosity, with the orientation of the…
We propose a framework within which a robust mechanical definition of precursors to plastic instabilities, often termed `soft-spots', naturally emerges. They are shown to be collective displacements (modes) $\hat{z}_0$ that correspond to…
We present a theory for the elasticity of cross-linked stiff polymer networks. Stiff polymers, unlike their flexible counterparts, are highly anisotropic elastic objects. Similar to mechanical beams stiff polymers easily deform in bending,…
We consider a class of nonconvex energy functionals that lies in the framework of the peridynamics model of continuum mechanics. The energy densities are functions of a nonlocal strain that describes deformation based on pairwise…
A lattice of elastic rods organized in a parallelepiped geometry can be axially loaded up to an arbitrary amount without distortion and then be subject to incremental displacements. Using quasi-static homogenization theory, this lattice can…
Disordered solids, straddling the solid-fluid boundary, lack a comprehensive continuum mechanical description. They exhibit a complex microstructure wherein multiple meta-stable states exist. Deforming disordered solids induces particles…
Can active forces be exploited to drive the consistent collapse of an active polymer into a folded structure? In this paper we introduce and perform numerical simulations of a simple model of active colloidal folders, and show that a…
Exciting electrons in solids with intense light pulses offers the possibility of generating new states of matter through nonthermal means and controlling their macroscopic properties on femto- to picosecond timescales. One way to manipulate…