Materials geomimicry is a newly emerging area that interfaces soft matter mechanics, earth materials, and environmental sustainability. We published two manuscripts this fall that push the boundaries of understanding natural earth materials as a new class of soft matter.
Origins of complexity in the rheology of Soft Earth suspensions published in Nature Communications highlights a new “Soft Earth” model to understand mechanical properties of heterogenous soft matter systems and generate insights into engineering soft particulates system with interaction-controlled brittle-ductile failure transition.
Soft matter mechanics of baseball’s rubbing mud published in PNAS solved (kind of..) the mystery behind using natural mud as de-glossing material on baseball surfaces and demonstrates a multiscale mechanical framework towards geoinspired sustainable materials design.