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Mechanical metamaterials are usually designed to show desired responses to prescribed forces. In some applications, the desired force-response relationship might be hard to specify exactly, although examples of forces and corresponding…
Cessation of flow in simple yield stress fluids results in a complex stress relaxation process that depends on the preceding flow conditions and leads to finite residual stresses. To assess the microscopic origin of this phenomenon, we…
From understanding the sand on the beach to the foam on your beer, soft sphere simulations have been crucial to the study of the amorphous world around us. However, many of the materials we interact with on a daily basis aren't comprised of…
Grasping deformable objects is not well researched due to the complexity in modelling and simulating the dynamic behavior of such objects. However, with the rapid development of physics-based simulators that support soft bodies, the…
Designing a stabilizing controller for nonlinear systems is a challenging task, especially for high-dimensional problems with unknown dynamics. Traditional reinforcement learning algorithms applied to stabilization tasks tend to drive the…
Constitutive equations are derived for the viscoelastic behavior of filled elastomers at isothermal loading with finite strains. A particle-reinforced rubber is thought of as a composite where regions with low concentrations of junctions…
From bone and wood to concrete and carbon fibre, composites are ubiquitous natural and engineering materials. Eshelby's inclusion theory describes how macroscopic stress fields couple to isolated microscopic inclusions, allowing prediction…
We present simple models of particulate materials whose mechanical integrity arises from a jamming process. We argue that such media are generically "fragile", that is, they are unable to support certain types of incremental loading without…
The application of granular jamming in soft robotics is a recent and promising new technology offer exciting possibilities for creating higher performance robotic devices. Granular jamming is achieved via the application of a vacuum…
Collagen is the main structural and load-bearing element of various connective tissues, where it forms the extracellular matrix that supports cells. It has long been known that collagenous tissues exhibit a highly nonlinear stress-strain…
Evaluating the mechanical response of fiber-reinforced composites can be extremely time consuming and expensive. Machine learning (ML) techniques offer a means for faster predictions via models trained on existing input-output pairs and…
Disordered fibrous matrices, formed by the random assembly of fibers, provide the structural framework for many biological systems and biomaterials. Applied deformation modifies the alignment and stress states of constituent fibers, tuning…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
This paper contains a thorough investigation of the performance of electrically activated layered soft dielectric composite actuators under plane deformation. Noting that the activation can be induced controlling either the voltage or the…
Understanding how interparticle interactions govern phase behavior is central to controlling self-organization in multicomponent soft-matter systems. In particular, the role of cross-interactions between unlike components remains…
Granular materials are ubiquitous in nature and are used extensively in daily life and in industry. The modeling of these materials remains challenging; therefore, finding models with acceptable predictive accuracy that at the same time…
The mechanical performance of reinforced composites is strongly influenced at different scales by the stress transferred at the matrix-fibre interfaces and at any surface where material discontinuity occurs. In particular, the mechanical…
This paper presents an interaction control algorithm for a dielectric elastomer membrane actuator. The proposed method permits efficient exploitation of the controllable stiffness of the material, allowing to use the membrane as a…
Nonlinear metamaterials with tailored mechanical properties have applications in engineering, medicine, robotics, and beyond. While modeling their macromechanical behavior is challenging in itself, finding structure parameters that lead to…
Soft materials including elastomers and gels are pervasive in biological systems and technological applications. Whereas it is known that intrinsic fracture energies of soft materials are relatively low, how the intrinsic fracture energy…