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Molecular mechanics of beta-sheets

Submitted by noyco on

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

Beta-sheet protein structures and domains are widely found in biological materials such as silk. These assemblies play amajor role in the extraordinary strength and unique properties of biomaterials.  In our new work, we employ simple Langevin-based models to investigate the behavior and the collapse of these structures.

Effective Response of Heterogeneous Materials using the Recursive Projection Method

Submitted by XiaoyaoPeng on

This is the preprint of an article that will appear in Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2020.112946).

Effective Response of Heterogeneous Materials using the Recursive Projection Method

Xiaoyao Peng (Carnegie Mellon University), Dhriti Nepal (Air Force Research Laboratory), Kaushik Dayal (Carnegie Mellon University)

A constitutive model of microfiber reinforced anisotropic hydrogels: With applications to wood-based hydrogels

Submitted by Zheng Jia on

Jian Cheng, Zheng Jia*, Teng Li*, A constitutive model of microfiber reinforced anisotropic hydrogels: with applications to wood-based hydrogels, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 138 (2020) 103893 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmps.2020.103893)


Journal Club for March 2020: Molecular Simulation-Guided and Physics-Informed Multiscale Modeling of Polymer Viscoelasticity

Submitted by Ying Li on

Journal Club for March 2020: Molecular Simulation-Guided and Physics-Informed Multiscale Modeling of Polymer Viscoelasticity

Ying Li, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Connecticut

1.       Introduction

Fatigue-resistant hydrogel adhesion

Submitted by linst06 on

This is our recent work on the design of fatigue-resistant hydrogel adhesion. In this work, we show that fatigue-resistant hydrogel adhesion can be achieved by anchoring ordered nanocrystalline domains at the interface. This method is applicable to glass, ceramic, titanium, aluminum, stainless steel, and even elastomers including PU and PDMS. We also demonstrate its potential applications as endurant hydrogel coatings for versatile engineering materials with complex geometries.

Computing with non-orientable defects: nematics, smectics and natural patterns

Submitted by Amit Acharya on

Chiqun Zhang         Amit Acharya        Alan C Newell          Shankar C Venkataramani

 (in Physica, D)

Defects, a ubiquitous feature of ordered media, have certain universal features, independent of the underlying physical system, reflecting their topological, as opposed to energetic properties. We exploit this universality, in conjunction with smoothing defects by "spreading them out," to develop a modeling framework and associated numerical methods that are applicable to computing energy driven behaviors of defects across the amorphous-soft-crystalline materials spectrum. Motivated by ideas for dealing with elastic-plastic solids with line defects, our methods can handle order parameters that have a head-tail symmetry, i.e. director fields, in systems with a continuous translation symmetry, as in nematic liquid crystals, and in systems where the translation symmetry is broken, as in smectics and convection patterns. We illustrate our methods with explicit computations.

Preprint

Light‐Boosting Highly Sensitive Pressure Sensors Based on Bioinspired Multiscale Surface Structures

Submitted by Fan Xu on

Pressure sensors have attracted tremendous attention because of their potential applications in the fields of health monitoring, human–machine interfaces, artificial intelligence, and so on. Improving pressure‐sensing performances, especially the sensitivity and the detection limit, is of great importance to expand the related applications, however it is still an enormous challenge so far. Herein, highly sensitive piezoresistive pressure sensors are reported with novel light‐boosting sensing performances.