arXiv subjects

Erik van der Linden

Publications and source records attributed to Erik van der Linden.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Methodological opportunities for mitigating climate change in complex food systems

Unravelling current complex food systems is relevant for their adjustment and redesign under the current changing climate conditions. Redesign may be necessitated by migration of people and changes of locations of major agri-food production. The redesign should be conducted synchronously with that of systems entangled with the food system, such as the socio-economic and cultural system. For such synchronous redesign a common methodological approach with a common set of methods is required. In the current article we suggest a common set of methods, and discuss how these methods find their basis in vastly different science fields, ranging from soft matter, biology, urban socio-economics, ecology, to machine learning. We address the various ways such methods have been applied in relatively small parts of the food systems and how they can be applied to larger parts of current and future food systems. The set of methods facilitates to identify the level of structuredness and randomness in complex systems. It helps to better predict upcoming transitions in complex systems, according critical points, and sudden instabilities. It facilitates in extracting information from a system, before, during and after the time that one makes an intervention, which in turn will help to decide which interventions are best to maintain or change functions of a complex system.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2024

Phase separation in complex mixtures with many components: analytical expressions for spinodal manifolds

The phase behavior is investigated for systems composed of a large number of macromolecular components N, with N greater or equal to 2. Liquid-liquid phase separation is modelled using a virial expansion up to the second order of the concentrations of the components. Formal analytical expressions for the spinodal manifolds in N dimensions are derived that simplify their calculation (by transforming the original problem into inequalities that can be evaluated numerically using linear programming techniques). In addition, a new expression is obtained to calculate the critical manifold and the composition of the co-existing phases. The present analytical procedure complements previous attempts to handle spinodal decomposition for many components using a statistical approach based on Random Matrix Theory. The results are relevant for predicting effects of polydispersity on phase behavior in fields like polymer or food science, and to liquid-liquid phase separation in the cytosol of living cells.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2023

Strengthening our grip on food security by encoding physics into AI

Climate change will jeopardize food security. Food security involves the robustness of the global agri-food system. This agri-food system is intricately connected to systems centering around health, economy, social-cultural diversity, and global political stability. A systematic way to determine acceptable interventions in the global agri-food systems involves analyses at different spatial and temporal scales. Such multi-scale analyses are common within physics. Unfortunately, physics alone is not sufficient. Machine learning techniques may aid. We focus on neural networks (NN) into which physics-based information is encoded (PeNN) and apply it to a sub-problem within the agri-food system. We show that the mean squared error of the PeNN is always smaller than that of the NNs, in the order of a factor of thousand. Furthermore, the PeNNs capture extra and interpolation very well, contrary to the NNs. It is shown that PeNNs need a much smaller data set size than the NNs to achieve a similar mse. Our results suggest that the incorporation of physics into neural networks architectures yields promise for addressing food security.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2022

Universal Transition to Wide Shear Zones in Entangled Macroscale Chains or Ropes

Macroscale chains have been proposed to give insight into the physics of molecular polymer systems. Nevertheless, understanding the rheological response of systems of quasi-one-dimensional semiflexible materials, such as bead-chain packings, is currently a great challenge. We study the nonlinear rheology of random assemblies of macroscale chains -- including steel bead chains and cooked spaghetti -- under oscillatory shear. We show that a universal transition from localized to wide shear zones occurs upon increasing the strain amplitude, for a wide range of lengths, flexibilities, and other structural parameters of the constituent elements. The critical strain amplitude coincides with the onset of strain stiffening development in the system. We obtain scaling laws for transition sharpness, shear-zone width, and stiffness enhancement as a function of chain length. Our findings suggest that the entanglements between the constituent elements strengthen when approaching the critical strain amplitude and rapidly become long range, even spanning the entire finite system for long enough chains. We show that the nonlinear rheological response is governed by the interplay between increasing stored elastic forces due to entanglements and increasing contribution of dissipation with shear rate and interlocking between chains.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2021

Inverted and programmable Poynting effects in metamaterials

The Poynting effect generically manifests itself as the extension of the material in the direction perpendicular to an applied shear deformation (torsion) and is a material parameter hard to design. Unlike isotropic solids, in designed structures, peculiar couplings between shear and normal deformations can be achieved and exploited for practical applications. Here, we engineer a metamaterial that can be programmed to contract or extend under torsion and undergo nonlinear twist under compression. First, we show that our system exhibits a novel type of inverted Poynting effect, where axial compression induces a nonlinear torsion. Then the Poynting modulus of the structure is programmed from initial negative values to zero and positive values via a pre-compression applied prior to torsion. Our work opens avenues for programming nonlinear elastic moduli of materials and tuning the couplings between shear and normal responses by rational design. Obtaining inverted and programmable Poynting effects in metamaterials inspires diverse applications from designing machine materials, soft robots and actuators to engineering biological tissues, implants and prosthetic devices functioning under compression and torsion.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2019

Effect of polydispersity on the phase behavior of additive hard spheres in solution, part I

We study the theoretical phase behavior of an asymmetric binary mixture of hard spheres, of which the smaller component is monodisperse and the larger component is polydisperse. The interactions are modelled in terms of the second virial coefficient and are assumed to be additive hard sphere interactions. The polydisperse component is subdivided into sub-components and has an average size ten times the size of the monodisperse component. We give the set of equations that defines the phase diagram for mixtures with more than two components in a solvent. We calculate the theoretical liquid-liquid phase separation boundary (the binodal), the critical point and the spinodal. We vary the distribution of the polydisperse component in skewness, modality, polydispersity and number of sub-components. We compare the phase behavior of the polydisperse mixtures with binary monodisperse mixtures for the same average size and binary monodisperse mixtures for the same effective interaction. We find that the largest species in the larger (polydisperse) component causes the largest shift in the position of the phase boundary, critical point and spinodal compared to the binary monodisperse binary mixtures. The polydisperse component also shows fractionation. The smaller species of the polydisperse component favor the phase enriched in the smaller component. This phase also has a higher volume fraction compared to the monodisperse mixture.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2019

Effect of polydispersity on the phase behavior of non-additive hard spheres in solution, part II

We study the theoretical phase behavior of an asymmetric binary mixture of hard spheres, of which the smaller component is monodisperse and the larger component is polydisperse. The interactions are modeled in terms of the second virial coefficient and can be additive hard sphere (HS) or non-additive hard sphere (NAHS) interactions. The polydisperse component is subdivided into two sub-components and has an average size ten or three times the size of the monodisperse component. We give the set of equations that defines the phase diagram for mixtures with more than two components in a solvent. We calculate the theoretical liquid-liquid phase separation boundary for two phase separation (the binodal) and three phase separation, the plait point, and the spinodal. We vary the distribution of the polydisperse component in skewness and polydispersity, next to that we vary the non-additivity between the sub-components as well as between the main components. We compare the phase behavior of the polydisperse mixtures with binary monodisperse mixtures for the same average size and binary monodisperse mixtures for the same effective interaction. We find that when the compatibility between the polydisperse sub-components decreases, three-phase separation becomes possible. The shape and position of the phase boundary is dependent on the non-additivity between the subcomponents as well as their size distribution. We conclude that it is the phase enriched in the polydisperse component that demixes into an additional phase when the incompatibility between the sub-components increases.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2018

A Quantitative Information Measure applied to Texture Perception Attributes during Mastication

We have calculated a quantitative measure of information of experimentally determined temporal dominance of sensations (TDS) frequencies of texture attributes, for a set of diverse samples throughout the mastication cycle. The samples were emulsion filled gels, two-layered emulsion filled gels, and sausages. For the majority of the samples we find one master curve, where swallowing takes place after the information increases from its minimum. The master curve may indicate a simplifying principle during mastication and subsequent swallowing. We have also calculated a particular complexity measure. This measure displays an increase just before swallowing.

eess.SP↗