arXiv subjects

Tyler Hain

Publications and source records attributed to Tyler Hain.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Using the force landscape of an active solid to predict plastic deformation

Non-active disordered solids feature quasilocalized excitations that control plasticity, similar to crystal lattice defects, and these excitations can be identified via harmonic or anharmonic analyses of the potential energy landscape. Here we explore whether such ideas can be extended to active matter, focusing on dense packings of self-propelled rods. We generalize the definition of nonlinear excitations to force landscapes that incorporate active, non-conservative forces and find that force-based cubic excitations robustly predict future plastic events, enabling control of active solids.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2025

Rigidity and mechanical response in biological structures

Rigidity is an emergent property of materials - it is not a feature of individual components that comprise the structure, but instead arises from interactions between many constituent parts. Recently, it has been recognized that floppy-rigid or fluid-solid transitions are harnessed by biological systems at all scales to drive form and function. This review focuses on the different mechanisms that can drive emergent rigidity transitions in biomechanical networks, and describes how they arise in mathematical formalisms and how they are observed in practice in experiments. The goal is to aid researchers in identifying mechanisms governing rigidity in their biological systems of interest, highlight mechanical features that are universal across different systems, and help drive new scientific hypotheses for observed mechanical phenomena in biology. Looking forward, we also discuss how biological systems might tune themselves towards or away from such transitions over developmental or evolutionary timescales.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2024

Optimizing properties on the critical rigidity manifold of underconstrained central-force networks

Our goal is to develop a design framework for multifunctional mechanical metamaterials that can tune their rigidity while optimizing other desired properties. Towards this goal, we first demonstrate that underconstrained central force networks possess a critical rigidity manifold of codimension one in the space of their physical constraints. We describe how the geometry of this manifold generates a natural parameterization in terms of the states of self-stress, and then use this parameterization to numerically generate disordered network structures that are on the critical rigidity manifold and also optimize various objective functions, such as maximizing the bulk stiffness under dilation, or minimizing length variance to find networks that can be self-assembled from equal-length parts. This framework can be used to design mechanical metamaterials that can tune their rigidity and also exhibit other desired properties.

cond-mat.soft↗