The cohesive strength of granular materials is a consequence of either cohesive bonding (capillary bridging, van der Waals forces) between the grains or the action of a binding solid or liquid material in the pore space. I first discuss the constitutive framework of the plastic behavior of granular materials with internal variables pertaining to the granular fabric. Then, I show how cohesive granular systems can be simulated by different methods accounting for capillary or solid bonding and in the presence of a binding solid or liquid. Finally, I focus on two issues: (1) How does local granular disorder affects the scale-up of cohesive interactions? (2) What are the respective roles of adhesion and volume fraction in the case of binding materials?

As a voltage is applied on a layer of an electroactive polymer, the polymer can reduce in thickness and expand in area, giving an actuation strain over 100%. This talk will discuss the large deformation, instabilities, and energy conversion of electroactive polymers. We will particularly focus on new phenomena of electroactive polymers recently observed at Duke Soft Active Materials Laboratory. Interestingly, these phenomena are closely related to daily-life issues such as skin wrinkling and creasing, physical topics such as the Taylor-Cone instability, and engineering applications such as high-energy-density capacitors and anti-biofouling.

Granular materials exist all around us, from avalanches in nature to the mixing of pharmaceuticals, yet the behavior of these ``fluids'' is poorly understood. Their flow can be characterized by the continuous forming and breaking of a strong force network resisting flow. This jamming/unjamming behavior is typical of a variety of systems, including granular flows, and is influenced by factors such as grain packing fraction, applied shear stress, and the random kinetic energy of the particles. I'll present experiments on quasi-static shear and free-surface granular flows under the influence of external vibrations. By using photoelastic grains, we are able to measure both particle trajectories and the local force network in these 2D flows. We find through particle tracking that dense granular flow is composed of comparable contributions from the mean flow, affine, and non-affine deformations. During shear, sufficient external vibration weakens the strong force network and reduces the amount of flow driven by sidewalls. In a rotating drum geometry, large vibrations induce failure as might be expected, while small vibration leads to strengthening of the pile. The avalanching behavior is also strongly history dependent, as evident when the rotating drum is driven in an oscillatory motion, and we find that sufficient vibration erases the memory of the pile. These results point to the central role of the mobilization of friction in quasi-static granular flow.

The problem of reforestation is studied by solving a vegetation model in drylands. The "shikim" water harvesting method is seen as a parametric periodic forcing of a pattern forming system, where the resulting stripes and spots patterns are 1:1 and 2:1 resonant solutions. A modified Swift-Hohenberg equation helps us understand the dynamics of collapse and expansion of patterned states. I conclude by addressing preventive measures that make the vegetation system more resilient to climatic changes, and help avoid catastrophic regime shifts.

A drop translating in the presence of an electric field is studied using a combination of experiments and numerical analysis to determine the underly- ing mechanism that leads to chaotic advection. The flow is a combination of a Hadamard-Rybczynski, and a Taylor circulation due to the translation and electric field, respectively. Two cases for generating chaotic advection by, (i) tilting the electric field relative to the drops translation motion and (ii) time-dependent modulation of the electric field, will be considered. The numerical analysis includes qualitative analysis of the degree of mixing by Poincare mapping and quantitative estimates of the largest percentage of drop volume mixed by a single streamline as well as the rate of mixing by calculating the largest Lyapunov exponent. Experiments are performed using a castor oil/silicone oil system for the continuous and dispersed phases respectively.

A certain 2D lattice model with nearest and next-nearest neighbor interactions is known to have a nonperiodic ground state. We show that during a slow quench from the high temperature, disordered phase, the ground state emerges through an infinite sequence of phase transitions. We define appropriate order parameters and show that the transitions are related by renormalizations of the temperature scale. As the temperature is decreased, sublattices with increasingly large lattice constants become ordered. A rapid quench results in glass-like state due to kinetic barriers created by simultaneous freezing on sublattices with different lattice constants.