Experimental Study of Athermal Elastic Network Mechanics

Recently, significant theoretical effort has been directed towards understanding the mechanics of networks. Elastic networks are of inherent fundamental interest \footnote{Mao, X., Stenull, O. and Lubensky, T.C., ``Elasticity of a filamentous kagome lattice'', Physical Review E, 87:042604} and serve as useful analogs for describing other physical systems. Recent applications include modeling of collagen \footnote{Licup, J. et al.,``Stress Controls the mechanics of collagen networks'', PNAS, 2015, 112:9573-9578} and descriptions of jamming in granular media and glass formation \footnote{Liu, A and Nagel, S. R., ``The Jamming Transition and the Marginally Jammed Solid'', Annual Reviews of Condensed Matter Physics, 2010, 1:347-69}. I propose to discuss ongoing experimental efforts to study mechanical properties of elastic networks, such as Young’s modulus and ultimate strength, in the athermal limit. I will begin with the simple case of regular, isostatic crystalline lattices and proceed to studies of random, connected elastic networks of varying bond number for a given number of lattice sites, including both isostatic and sub-isostatic networks.