noyco's blog

How can we induce twist in tubular structures without applying a torque?

In nature, such behavior is enabled by material anisotropy. In our new work, we show that isotropic bi-layer tubes with twist incompatible layers can twist upon inflation and extension.
Interestingly, the direction of twist can spontaneously reverse as the load increases!

Check out our new paper at EML:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352431621000766

Spider silk is a protein material that exhibits extraordinary and nontrivial properties such as the ability to soften and decrease its length by up to ∼60% upon exposure to high humidity. This counter-intuitive process is commonly called supercontraction and is the result of a transition from a highly oriented glassy phase to a disoriented rubbery phase. In our new paper (published in biomacromolecules) we derive a model that explains the origins of the supercontraction phenomena.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsbiomaterials.9b01983

Our recent work introduces a microscopically motivated model for the swelling response of polymer networks with non-covalent cross-linking bonds.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020768319303063?via%3Dihub

Highlights:

Our group is part of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Techion – Israel Institute of Technology, located in Haifa, Israel.

We employ theoretical and experimental tools to understand the relations between the micro-structure and the macroscopic response of soft materials. Materials of interest include electro-active polymers, 3D printed lattice structures, biopolymers, and gels.

Recent theoretical works have shown that the electro-mechanical performance of dielectric elastomers can be enhanced through micro-structural design.

This work introduces a new microscopically-motivated model for the electromechanical response of elastomers:

http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0022509615303525/1-s2.0-S0022509615303525-main.pdf?_tid=1db1e302-202a-11e6-8a60-00000aacb361&acdnat=1463927774_d9ad1fa74b5b42fafcb28a8b6b2c9b60

The merit of this novel model is demonstrated in the following paper