Related papers: Mechanical Failure of a Small and Confined Solid
Surfactant-laden thin liquid films overlaid on solid substrates are encountered in a variety of industrial and biological settings. As these films reach submicron thickness, they tend to become unstable owing to the influence of long-range…
We have examined theoretically the spontaneous thinning process of tip-suspended nanowires, and subsequently studied the structure and stability of the monatomic gold wires recently observed by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). The…
Many biological materials consist of sparse networks of disordered fibres, embedded in a soft elastic matrix. The interplay between rigid and soft elements in such composite networks leads to mechanical properties that can go far beyond the…
A scroll wave in a sufficiently thin layer of an excitable medium with negative filament tension can be stable nevertheless due to filament rigidity. Above a certain critical thickness of the medium, such scroll wave will have a tendency to…
Discontinuous shear thickening (DST) is associated with a sharp rise of a suspension's viscosity with increasing applied shear rate. A key signature of DST, highlighted in recent studies, is the very large fluctuations of the measured…
We show that when graphene monolayers are disordered, the conductance exhibits a metallic-to-insulating transition, which opens the door to new electronic devices. The transition can be observed by driving the density or Fermi energy…
The flow of amorphous solids results from a combination of elastic deformation and local structural rearrangements, which induce non-local elastic deformations. These elements are incorporated into a mechanically-consistent mesoscopic model…
Crack growth is the basic mechanism leading to the failure of brittle materials. Engineering addresses this problem within the framework of continuum mechanics, which links deterministically the crack motion to the applied loading. Such an…
An individual defect in a nematic liquid crystal moves not only in response to its interaction with other defects but also in response to an external field. We analyze the motion of a wedge disclination in the presence of an applied field…
Localised turbulent structures such as puffs or oblique stripes are building blocks of the intermittency regimes in subcritical wall-bounded shear flows. These turbulent structures are investigated in incompressible pressure-driven annular…
The paper develops the stiffness relationship between the movements and forces among a system of discrete interacting grains. The approach is similar to that used in structural analysis, but the stiffness matrix of granular material is…
Using novel micro-printing techniques, we develop a versatile experimental setup that allows us to study how lateral confinement tames the active flows and defect properties of the microtubule/kinesin active nematic system. We demonstrate…
Highly-deformable materials, from synthetic hydrogels to biological tissues, are becoming increasingly important from both fundamental and practical perspectives. Their mechanical behaviors, in particular the dynamics of crack propagation…
Continuum mechanics describes compressive failure as a standard bifurcation in the response of a material to an increasing load: damage, which initially grows uniformly in the material, localizes within a thin band at failure. Yet,…
Plasticity in soft amorphous materials typically involves collective deformation patterns that emerge upon intense shearing. The microscopic basis of amorphous plasticity has been commonly established through the notion of "Eshelby"-type…
We conpare predictions of the mean-field theory of supercnductivity for metallic systems on the border of a density instability for cubic and tetragonal lattices. The calculations are based on a parametrisation of an effective interaction…
We present experiments on the dynamic buckling and fragmentation of slender rods axially impacted by a projectile. By combining the results of Saint-Venant and elastic beam theory, we derive a preferred wavelength lambda for the buckling…
Thanks to the remarkable developments of ultrafast science, one of today's challenges is to modify material state by controlling with a light pulse the coherent motions that connect two different phases. Here we show how strain waves,…
The surface shape of a spinning bucket of granular material is studied using a continuum model of surface flow developed by Bouchaud et al. and Mehta et al. An experimentally observed central subcritical region is reproduced by the model.…
We study the mechanical buckling of a two dimensional membrane coated with a thin layer of superfluid. It is seen that a singularity (vortex or anti-vortex defect) in the phase of the quantum order parameter, distorts the membrane metric…