Related papers: A simple microscopic model for the dynamics of adh…
Soft polymers are ubiquitous materials in nature and as engineering materials with properties varying from rate-independent to rate-dependent. Current fracture toughness measures are non-unique for rate-dependent soft materials for varying…
Active-elastic instabilities are common phenomena in the natural world which have the aspect of sudden mechanical morphings. Frequently, the driving force of the instability mechanisms has a chemo-mechanical nature which makes these kind of…
Repeated loading of a solid leads to microstructural damage that ultimately results in catastrophic material failure. While posing a major threat to the stability of virtually all materials, the microscopic origins of fatigue, especially…
We present an experimental investigation of the non stationary frictional properties of multicontact interfaces between rough elastomers and rough hard glass at low velocities (<= 200 mu m s^{-1}). These systems, for which the deformation…
Modelling of rough frictional interfaces is often based on asperity models, in which the individual behaviour of individual microjunctions is assumed. In the absence of local measurements at the microjunction scale, quantitative comparison…
Surface roughness is known to easily suppress the adhesion of elastic surfaces. Here a simple model for the contact of \emph{viscoelastic} rough surfaces with significant levels of adhesion is presented. This approach is derived from our…
We study theoretically the hydrodynamics of a fluid drop containing oriented filaments endowed with active contractile or extensile stresses and placed on a solid surface. The active stresses alter qualitatively the wetting properties of…
Fiber bundles with statistically distributed thresholds for breakdown of individual fibers are interesting models of the static and dynamics of failures in materials under stress. They can be analyzed to an extent that is not possible for…
We use molecular simulations to explore how sample dimensions and interfacial properties impact some generic aspects of the mechanical and structural behavior of nanoconfined materials. Specifically, we calculate the strain-dependent…
We study the mechanical stiffening behavior in two-dimensional (2D) cross-linked networks of semiflexible biopolymer filaments under simple shear. Filamental constituents immersed in a fluid undergo thermally excited bending motions.…
Material produced by current metal additive manufacturing processes is susceptible to variable performance due to imprecise control of internal porosity, surface roughness, and conformity to designed geometry. Using a double U-notched…
A slender object undergoing an axial compression will buckle to alleviate the stress. Typically the morphology of the deformed object depends on the bending stiffness for solids, or the viscoelastic properties for liquid threads. We study a…
We study the response of F-actin bundles to driving forces through a simple analytical model. We consider two filaments connected by reversibly bound crosslinks and driven by an external force. Two failure modes under load can be defined.…
The application of hybrid composites in lightweight engineering enables the combination of material-specific advantages of fiber-reinforced polymers and classical metals. The interface between the connected materials is of particular…
Under an applied external load the global load-sharing fiber bundle model, with individual fiber strength thresholds sampled randomly from a probability distribution, will relax to an equilibrium state, or to complete bundle breakdown. The…
Biofilament-motor protein complexes are ubiquitous in biology and drive the transport of cargo vital for many fundamental cellular processes. As they move, motor proteins exert compressive forces on the filaments to which they are attached,…
Curved thin sheets are ubiquitously found in nature and manmade structures. Within the framework of classical thin plate theory, the stiffness of thin sheets is independent of its bending state. This assumption, however, goes against…
The structural properties of a linear polymer and its evolution in time have a strong bearing on its anisotropic stress response. The mean-square bond length and mean bond angle are the critical parameters that influence the time-varying…
Stressed under a constant load, materials creep with a final acceleration of deformation and for any given applied stress and material, the creep failure time can strongly vary. We investigate creep on sheets of paper and confront the…
We experimentally investigate the growth dynamics of cavities nucleating during the first stages of debonding of three different model adhesives. The material properties of these adhesives range from a more liquid-like material to a soft…