Gel mechanics, soft and hard materials

Mehdi Bouzid and Emanuela wrote a book chapter on “Mechanics of Soft Gels: Linear and Nonlinear Response” for the second edition of the Handbook of Materials Modeling (Springer), Eds. W. Andreoni and S. Yip.

Soft gels are materials at the core of material technological innovation, and as such, they are constantly evolving to meet different requirements in terms of performance, reliability, durability, and environmental impact.

We have discussed how numerical simulations of suitably designed microscopic models can help develop novel insight into the microscopic mechanisms that underlie the complex dynamics of these versatile materials. In particular, we provide an overview of the computational approach we have recently developed in the last few years and of the main outcomes obtained.

For the same book, Emanuela wrote a chapter on “From Microscopic Insight to Constitutive Models: Bridging Length Scales in Soft and Hard Materials” with Kirsten Martens (Université de Grenoble) and Roland Pellenq (CNRS).