Jamming and Flow of Frustrated Rods

Manifestations of dense packings of anisotropic rods are ubiquitous across a wide variety of physical systems. Knowledge of how they jam and flow in response to applied stress is important for understanding a diverse range of phenomena including debris flow in landslides, biological transport of rod-like viruses and industrial processes such as additive manufacturing. Unlike their more symmetric counter parts, rod-like particles tend to order which can suppress jamming. This ordering can be frustrated by introducing a constant curvature that breaks the axial symmetry of straight rods. The preference for uniform bend is often accompanied by additional splay or twist deformations, leading to unique states of nematic splay-bend or twist-bend order. Additionally, this situation has recently been shown to be compatible with the existence of exotic topological defects such as Skyrmions. In this talk, results from molecular dynamic simulations will be presented to investigate the effect of curvature and applied shear stress on the behavior of dense packings of rigid rods, with a particular focus on understanding how the frustration of local order facilitates jamming and opens up potential mechanisms to control the structure and functionality of complex material.