Related papers: Untwisting of a Strained Cholesteric Elastomer by …
Based on the wormlike chain model, a coarse-grained description of the nonlinear dynamics of a weakly bending semiflexible polymer is developed. By means of a multiple scale perturbation analysis, a length-scale separation inherent to the…
We present an orthotropic elastic analysis of frictional granular layers under gravity by studying their stress response to a localized overload at the layer surface for several substrate tilt angles. The distance to the unjamming…
Crumpled thin sheets are complex fractal structures whose physical properties are influenced by a hierarchy of ridges. In this Letter, we report experiments that measure the stress-strain relation and show the coexistence of phases in the…
We study two aspects of the elasticity of smectic-$A$ elastomers that make these materials genuinely and qualitatively different from conventional uniaxial rubbers. Under strain applied parallel to the layer normal, monodomain smectic-$A$…
Cholesteric liquid crystals can exhibit spatial patterns in molecular alignment at interfaces that can be exploited for particle assembly. These patterns emerge from the competition between bulk and surface energies, tunable with the system…
This paper deals with a concept for a reconfigurable structure bio-inspired by the cell wall architecture of euglenids, a family of unicellular protists, and based on the relative sliding of adjacent strips. Uniform sliding turns a cylinder…
In layered materials, a common mode of deformation involves buckling of the layers under tensile deformation in the direction perpendicular to the layers. The instability mechanism, which operates in elastic materials from geological to…
When liquid-crystalline elastomers pass through the isotropic-nematic transition, the orientational order parameter and the elastic strain vary rapidly but smoothly, without the expected first-order discontinuity. This broadening of the…
We explore the electrostatic bending response of a chain of charged particles confined on a finite helical filament. We analyze how the energy difference $\Delta E$ between the bent and the unbent helical chain scales with the length of the…
We consider a suspended elastic rod under longitudinal compression. The compression can be used to adjust potential energy for transverse displacements from harmonic to double well regime. The two minima in potential energy curve describe…
The interplay between bending of the molecule axis and appearance of disruptions in circular DNA molecules, with $\sim 100$ base pairs, is addressed. Three minicircles with different radii and almost equal content of AT and GC pairs are…
The geometrical coupling between strain and twist in double helices is investigated. Overwinding, where strain leads to further winding, is shown to be a universal property for helices, which are stretched along their longitudinal axis when…
We study numerically the mechanical stability and elasticity properties of duplex DNA molecules within the frame of a network model incorporating microscopic degrees of freedom related with the arrangement of the base pairs. We pay special…
We propose a novel phase-field model to predict elastic microphase separation in polymer gels. To this end, we extend the Cahn-Hilliard free-energy functional to incorporate an elastic strain energy and a coupling term. These contributions…
The energy of a dislocation loop in a continuum elastic solid under pressure is considered within the framework of classical mechanics. For a circular loop, this is a function with a maximum at pressures that are well within reach of…
For monodomain nematic elastomers, we construct generalised elastic-nematic constitutive models combining purely elastic and neoclassical-type strain-energy densities. Inspired by recent developments in stochastic elasticity, we extend…
Using Monte Carlo simulations, we study the hysteresis in unzipping of a double stranded block copolymer DNA with $-A_n B_n-$ repeat units. Here $A$ and $B$ represent two different types of base pairs having two- and three-bonds,…
Liquid crystal elastomer films that morph into cones are strikingly capable lifters. Thus motivated, we combine theory, numerics, and experiments to reexamine the load-bearing capacity of conical shells. We show that a cone squashed between…
A disclination in a hexatic membrane favors the development of Gaussian curvature localized near its core. The resulting global structure of the membrane has mean curvature, which is disfavored by curvature energy. Thus a membrane with an…
Nonlinear elastic responses of short and stiff polyelectrolytes are investigated by dynamic simulations on a single molecule level. When a polyelectrolyte condensate undergoes a mechanical unfolding, two types of force-extension curves,…