Suspensions of non-Brownian particles in fluids are commonly found in nature (e.g. mud, soils, and debris flows) and in the industry (e.g. paints, food, and cosmetics). Understanding the relations between the microstructure and the effective properties of these materials can provide insight into how they fail or behave during processing. Despite their ubiquity and usefulness, […]

Stress-induced solid-to-solid phase transitions form a large class of phase transitions in nature. They occur in materials that can exhibit different crystal structures under different conditions (stress and temperature), and when the stress and temperature condition changes, the material may undergo a transformation from one phase to another. Despite its considerable potential in application, some […]

Surface force-mediated adhesion, e.g. van der Waals forces, is critical for direct bonding of bulk solids in the absence of an adhesive layer. However, no two surfaces are ideally flat or perfectly conformal due to surface roughness or intentional patterning. When in the adhered state, non-zero surface tractions arise wherever the local separation of the […]