Thermal runaway instability induced by material softening due to shear heating represents a potential mechanism for mechanical failure of viscoelastic solids. In this work we present a model based on a continuum formulation of a viscoelastic material with Arrhenius dependence of viscosity on temperature and investigate the behavior of the thermal runaway phenomenon by analytical and numerical m...

The phenomenon of buckling in compression of an elastic inhomogeneous medium under initial stress is well known. It is illustrated by the instability of a longitudinally compressed ‘elastic plate embedded in a medium of lower rigidity. Under a critical load buckling appears suddenly in the form of a sinusoidal folding of a certain wave-length. Such sudden buckling ,will, of course, not occur in...

Several aspects of the rheology of adhesives are important for their application and end use. Coating an adhesive requires the viscosity to fall between maximum and minimum viscosity limits and these depend upon the type of coating process that is to be used. Viscosity data is shown for the maximum and minimum acceptable limits for several types of coater. The modification of the flow propertie...

Understanding the mechanism of fracture is essential for material and process design. While the initiation of fracture in brittle solids is generally associated with the preexistence of material imperfections, the mechanism for initiation of fracture in viscoelastic fluids, e.g., polymer melts and solutions, remains an open question. We use high speed imaging to visualize crack propagation in e...

With the use of the Laplace integral transformation and state space formalism, the classical axial symmetric quasistatic problem of viscoelastic solids is discussed. By employing the method of separation of variables, the governing equations under Hamiltonian system are established, and hence, general solutions including the zero eigensolutions and nonzero eigensolutions are obtained analytical...

Chiral materials are not invariant to inversions: there is a distinction between rightand left-handed material. Material properties such as piezoelectricity and pyroelectricity, represented by tensors of odd rank, can only occur in chiral materials. Chiral e!ects in elasticity cannot be expressed within classical elasticity since the modulus tensor, which is fourth rank, is unchanged under an i...

Neurofilaments are found in abundance in the cytoskeleton of neurons, where they act as an intracellular framework protecting the neuron from external stresses. To elucidate the nature of the mechanical properties that provide this protection, we measure the linear and nonlinear viscoelastic properties of networks of neurofilaments. These networks are soft solids that exhibit dramatic strain st...