Related papers: The polymer mat: Arrested rebound of a compressed …
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of a flexible polymer tethered to a reflecting wall and subject to oscillatory linear flow are studied by numerical simulations. Polymer is confined in two dimensions and is modeled as…
We construct a micromechanical version of an early model for topologically constrained polymers -- a 2D chain amongst point-like uncrossable obstacles -- which allows us to explicitly elucidate the role of topological forces beyond…
We show that geometric confinement dramatically affects the shear-induced configurations of dense mono-disperse colloidal suspensions; a new structure emerges, where layers of particles buckle to stack in a more efficient packing. The…
We report surface shear rheological measurements on dense insoluble monolayers of micron sized colloidal spheres at the oil/water interface and of the protein $\beta$-lactoglobulin at the air/water surface. As expected, the elastic modulus…
A thermodynamic framework has been developed for a class of amorphous polymers used in fused deposition modeling (FDM), in order to predict the residual stresses and the accompanying distortion of the geometry of the printed part (warping).…
Both animal and plant tissue exhibit a nonlinear rheological phenomenon known as compression stiffening, or an increase in moduli with increasing uniaxial compressive strain. Does such a phenomenon exist in single cells, which are the…
The behavior of a polyelectrolyte adsorbed on a charged substrate of high-dielectric constant is studied by both Monte-Carlo simulation and analytical methods. It is found that in a low enough ionic strength medium, the adsorption…
We demonstrate an unexpected decay-recovery behaviour in the time-dependent $^{1}\mathrm{H}$ NMR relaxation times of water confined within a hydrating porous material. Our observations are rationalised by considering the combined effects of…
The constitutive relation of the quasi-static deformation on two dimensional packed samples of polygons is calculated using molecular dynamic simulations. The stress values at which the system remains stable are bounded by a failure…
Like emulsions, pastes and many other forms of soft condensed matter, aqueous foams present slow mechanical relaxations when subjected to a stress too small to induce any plastic flow. To identify the physical origin of this viscoelastic…
Elastomers are viscoelastic materials and their properties significantly depend on the loading rate. The actual stress experienced by these materials is the sum of equilibrium and dissipative (inelastic) terms. At very low loading rates we…
The dynamics of polymer decompression, i.e., a process from compressed, compact state to the relaxed swoll en conformation, can be formally described as a {\it nonlinear diffusion}. We discuss here two basic examples: (i) the expansion, or…
We make time resolved velocity measurements of steel spheres in free fall through liquid using a continuous ultrasound technique. We explore two different ways to induce large changes in drag on the spheres: 1) a small quantity of…
We report molecular dynamics simulation results on the equilibrium properties of polymer thin films adsorbed onto flat and curved substrates. We first systematically determine the contact angle of polymer droplets on flat substrates as a…
Chain-like macromolecules (polymers) show characteristic adsorption properties due to their flexibility and internal degrees of freedom, when attracted to surfaces and interfaces. In this review we discuss concepts and features that are…
We have generalized the Edwards' method of collective description of dense polymer systems in terms of effective potentials to polymer blends in the presence of a surface. With this method we have studied conformationally asymmetric…
We consider a simple cubic lattice self-avoiding walk model of 3-star polymers adsorbed at a surface and then desorbed by pulling with an externally applied force. We determine rigorously the free energy of the model in terms of properties…
We report a decreased surface wettability when polymer films on a glass substrate are treated by ultra-fast laser pulses in a back-illumination geometry. We propose that back-illumination through the substrate confines chemical changes…
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…
We consider a fully directed self-avoiding walk model on a cubic lattice to mimic the conformations of an infinitely long confined flexible polymer chain; and the confinement condition is achieved by two parallel athermal plates. The…