Buckling of spinning elastic cylinders

An elastic cylinder spinning about a rigid axis buckles beyond a critical angular velocity, by an instability driven by the centrifugal force. This instability and the competition between the different buckling modes are investigated using analytical calculations in the linear and weakly nonlinear regimes, complemented by numerical simulations in the fully post-buckled regime. The weakly nonlinear analysis is carried out for a generic incompressible hyperelastic material. The key role played by the quadratic term in the expansion of the strain energy density is pointed out: this term has a strong effect on both the nature of the bifurcation, which can switch from supercritical to subcritical, and the buckling amplitude. Given an arbitrary hyperelastic material, an equivalent shear modulus is proposed, allowing the main features of the instability to be captured by an equivalent neo-Hookean model.

Proc. R. Soc. A 474 (2216), 20180242 (2018)

Elastic Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

We demonstrate the instability of the free surface of a soft elastic solid facing downwards. Experiments are carried out using a gel of constant density ρ, shear modulus μ, put in a rigid cylindrical dish of depth h. When turned upside down, the free surface of the gel undergoes a normal outgoing acceleration g. It remains perfectly flat for ρ g h/μ< α* with α*≃ 6, whereas a steady pattern spontaneously appears in the opposite case. This phenomenon results from the interplay between the gravitational energy and the elastic energy of deformation, which reduces the Rayleigh waves celerity and vanishes it at the threshold.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 178301 (2014)

We investigate the non-linear buckling patterns produced by the elastic Rayleigh-Taylor instability in a hyper-elastic slab hanging below a rigid horizontal plane, using a combination of experiments, weakly non-linear expansions and numerical simulations. Our experiments reveal the formation of hexagonal patterns through a discontinuous transition. As the unbuckled state is transversely isotropic, a continuum of linear modes become critical at the first bifurcation load: the critical wavevectors form a circle contained in a horizontal plane. Using a weakly non-linear post-bifurcation expansion, we investigate how these linear modes cooperate to produce buckling patterns: by a mechanism documented in other transversely isotropic structures, three-modes coupling make the unbuckled configuration unstable with respect to hexagonal patterns by a transcritical bifurcation. Stripe and square patterns are solutions of the post-bifurcation expansion as well but they are unstable near the threshold. These analytical results are confirmed and complemented by numerical simulations.

Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids 121, 234-257 (2018)

Impact of beads

We investigate freely expanding sheets formed by ultrasoft gel beads, and liquid and viscoelastic drops, produced by the impact of the bead or drop on a silicon wafer covered with a thin layer of liquid nitrogen that suppresses viscous dissipation thanks to an inverse Leidenfrost effect. Our experiments show a unified behavior for the impact dynamics that holds for solids, liquids, and viscoelastic fluids and that we rationalize by properly taking into account elastocapillary effects. In this framework, the classical impact dynamics of solids and liquids, as far as viscous dissipation is negligible, appears as the asymptotic limits of a universal theoretical description. A novel material-dependent characteristic velocity that includes both capillary and bulk elasticity emerges from this unified description of the physics of impact.

Physical Review Letters 120 (14), 148003 (2018)

Elasto-buoancy

Large deformations in soft elastic materials are ubiquitous, yet systematic studies and methods to understand the mechanics of such huge strains are lacking. Here, we investigate this complex problem systematically with a simple experiment: by introducing a heavy bead of radius a in an incompressible soft elastic medium. We find a scaling law for the penetration depth (δ) of the bead inside the softest gels as δ∼ a 3/2, which is vindicated by an original asymptotic analytic model developed in this article. This model demonstrates that the observed relationship is precisely at the demarcating boundary of what would be required for the field variables to either diverge or converge. This correspondence between a unique mathematical prediction and the experimental observation ushers in new insights into the behavior of the deformations of strongly nonlinear materials.

Phys. Rev. X 6, 041066 (2016)

Softening of elastic wedges induced by surface tension

Under the effect of surface tension, a blob of liquid adopts a spherical shape when immersed in another fluid. We demonstrate experimentally that soft, centimeter-size elastic solids can exhibit a similar behavior: when immersed into a liquid, a gel having a low elastic modulus undergoes large, reversible deformations. We analyze three fundamental types of deformations of a slender elastic solid driven by surface stress, depending on the shape of its cross section: a circular elastic cylinder shortens in the longitudinal direction and stretches transversally; the sharp edges of a square based prism get rounded off as its cross sections tend to become circular; and a slender, triangular based prism bends. These experimental results are compared to analysis and nonlinear simulations of neo-Hookean solids deformed by surface tension and are found to be in good agreement with each other.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 114301 (2013)

Surface tension tends to minimize the area of interfaces between pieces of matter in different thermodynamic phases, be they in the solid or the liquid state. This can be relevant for the macroscopic shape of very soft solids and lead to a roughening of initially sharp edges. We calculate this effect for a Neo-Hookean elastic solid, with assumptions corresponding to actual experiments, namely the case where an initially sharp edge is rounded by the effect of surface tension felt when the fluid surrounding the soft solid (and so surface tension) is changed at the solid/liquid boundary. We consider two opposite limits where the analysis can be carried to the end, the one of a shallow angle and the one of a very sharp angle. Both cases yield a discontinuity of curvature in the state with surface tension although the initial state had a discontinuous slope.

Journal of Physics: Cond. Matt. vol 27, 194112 (2015)

Elastic Rayleigh-Plateau Instability

We report the observation of a Plateau instability in a thin filament of solid gel with a very small elastic modulus. A longitudinal undulation of the surface of the cylinder reduces its area thereby triggering capillary instability, but is counterbalanced by elastic forces following the deformation. This competition leads to a nontrivial instability threshold for a solid cylinder. The ratio of surface tension to elastic modulus defines a characteristic length scale. The onset of linear instability is when the radius of the cylinder is one-sixth of this length scale, in agreement with theory.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 214301 (2010)

Biot Instability

Using a uniaxial deformation setup, we show that the free surface of an homogeneous elastic material is unstable under compression: parallel grooves nucleate orthogonally to the direction of compression when a characteristic stretch ratio a* is reached. We measure experimentally the variation of a* as well as the wavelength of the grooves as a function of the thickness h0 of the material. All data collapse on single curves when normalizing h0 by a characteristic length which is the ratio of the surface tension to the shear modulus of the material. This length scale acts as a regularization parameter for the system. We introduce a theoretical model that captures well the features of the instability. The observed nucleation-like process for the grooves development suggests that the instability is subcritical.

Soft Matter 7, pp. 10612-10619 (2011)