Related papers: Entropic Elasticity at the Sol-Gel Transition
The precipitate shape, size and distribution are crucial factors which determine the properties of several technologically important alloys. Elastic interactions between the inclusions modify their morphology and align them along…
The torsional oscillator is the chief instrument for investigating supersolidity in solid 4He. These oscillators can be sensitive to the elastic properties of the solid helium, which show anomalies over the same range of temperature in…
We study the elastic properties of thermal networks of Hookean springs. In the purely mechanical limit, such systems are known to have vanishing rigidity when their connectivity falls below a critical, isostatic value. In this work we show…
The elastic moduli of four numerical random isotropic packings of Hertzian spheres are studied. The four samples are assembled with different preparation procedures, two of which aim to reproduce experimental compaction by vibration and…
We report, for the first time, some experimental observations regarding a new type of long range interaction between rigid particles that prevails when they are suspended in an soft elastic gel. A denser particle submerges itself to a…
Elastic properties of carbon nanotubes and nanoropes are investigated using an empirical force-constant model. For single and multi-wall nanotubes the elastic moduli are shown to be insensitive to details of the structure such as the…
Rigidity transitions in simple models of confluent cells have been a powerful organizing principle in understanding the dynamics and mechanics of dense biological tissue. In this work we explore the interplay between geometry and rigidity…
Macroscopic elastic core-shell systems can be generated as toy models to be deformed and haptically studied by hand. On the mesoscale, colloidal core-shell particles and microgels are fabricated and investigated by different types of…
A theoretical and numerically study of dynamical properties in the sol-gel transition is presented. In particular, the complex phenomenology observed experimentally and numerically in gelling systems is reproduced in the framework of…
We present two successive mean-field approximations for describing the mechanical properties and the swelling equilibrium of polyelectrolyte gels in contact with a salt solution. The first mean-field approximation reduces the many-chain…
Disordered biopolymer gels have striking mechanical properties including strong nonlinearities. In the case of athermal gels (such as collagen-I) the nonlinearity has long been associated with a crossover from a bending dominated to a…
Polymer gels are comprised of a three-dimensional, cross-linked network that can typically withstand the mechanical deformation associated with both swelling and de-swelling. Thus, gels can be designed with smart behaviors that require both…
Superfluidity, liquid flow without friction, is familiar in helium. The first evidence for "supersolidity", its analogue in quantum solids, came from recent torsional oscillator (TO) measurements involving 4-He. At temperatures below 200…
The buckling instabilities of core-shell systems, comprising an interior elastic sphere, attached to an exterior shell, have been proposed to underlie myriad biological morphologies. To fully discuss such systems, however, it is important…
The overall behavior of a 2D lattice of voids embedded in an anisotropic matrix is investigated in the limit of vanishing porosity f. An effective-medium model (of the Hashin-Shtrikman type) which accounts for elastic interactions between…
Computer simulations were used to study the gel transition occurring in colloidal systems with short range attractions. A colloid-polymer mixture was modelled and the results were compared with mode coupling theory expectations and with the…
In this paper we use a deterministic multi-asperity model to investigate the elastic contact of rough spheres. Synthetic rough surfaces with controllable spectra were used to identify individual asperities, their locations and curvatures.…
The size and shape of a large variety of polymeric particles, including biological cells, star polymers, dendrimes, and microgels, depend on the applied stresses as the particles are extremely soft. In high-density suspensions these…
A liquid drop impacting a non-wetting rigid substrate laterally spreads, then retracts, and finally jumps off again. An elastic solid, by contrast, undergoes a slight deformation, contacts briefly, and bounces. The impact force on the…
The normal modes and relaxation rates of weak colloidal gels are investigated in computations employing different models of the hydrodynamic interactions between colloids. The eigenspectrum is computed for freely draining,…