Surface tension and contact with soft elastic solids

Surface tension and a self-consistent theory of soft composite solids with elastic inclusions.

The importance of surface tension effects is being recognized in the context of soft composite solids, where they are found to significantly affect the mechanical properties, such as the elastic response to an external stress. It has recently been discovered that Eshelby's inclusion theory breaks down when the inclusion size approaches the elastocapillary length L≡γ/E, where γ is the inclusion/...

Elastic heterogeneity of soft random solids

Spatial heterogeneity in the elastic properties of soft random solids is examined via a semi-microscopic model network using replica statistical mechanics. The elastic heterogeneity is characterized by random residual stress and Lamé coefficient fields, and the statistics of these quantities is inferred. Correlations involving the residual-stress field are found to be long ranged and governed b...

Self-Organized Large Area Patterning of Soft Solids by Elastic Contact Lithography

Solid capillarity: when and how does surface tension deform soft solids?

Soft solids differ from stiff solids in an important way: their surface stresses can drive large deformations. Based on a topical workshop held in the Lorentz Center in Leiden, this Opinion highlights some recent advances in the growing field of solid capillarity and poses key questions for its advancement.

Surface tension and the Mori-Tanaka theory of non-dilute soft composite solids.

Eshelby's theory is the foundation of composite mechanics, allowing calculation of the effective elastic moduli of composites from a knowledge of their microstructure. However, it ignores interfacial stress and only applies to very dilute composites-i.e. where any inclusions are widely spaced apart. Here, within the framework of the Mori-Tanaka multiphase approximation scheme, we extend Eshelby...