Mechanics of Polymer-Based Soft Materials
A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Analysis and Characterization".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 33
Special Issue Editor
Interests: numerical methods; computational mechanics; mechanics of materials and structures
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Soft materials, including but not limited to polymers, elastomers, gels, rubber-like materials, biological tissues, and soft composites, are driving transformative advances in emerging technologies such as flexible electronics, biomedical devices, soft robotics, and adaptive metastructures. The rapid development of novel soft materials with extraordinary functionalities, coupled with discoveries of unique mechanical behaviors and mechanoresponsive phenomena, has spurred interdisciplinary efforts to establish reliable physical-mechanical models and predictive theories for soft materials and structures. Advances in computational materials science and mechanics, particularly AI-assisted approaches, are revolutionizing nearly all aspects of research on the mechanics of soft materials. This Special Issue aims to highlight cutting-edge experimental, theoretical, and computational advancements in soft material mechanics, emphasizing unresolved challenges in nonlinear mechanics, multi-phase/multi-physics coupling, failure mechanisms, and other critical issues, with a focus on integrating mechanics with materials science, and engineering.
Contributions are invited on, but not limited to, the following themes:
- Experimental innovations: Novel testing methods and experimental discoveries.
- Theoretical and modeling advances: Constitutive theories; hyperelasticity; viscoelasticity; multi-phase and multi-field coupling; shape memory, self-healing; fatigue, fracture, damage, aging, degradation, and failure mechanisms.
- Computational approaches: Molecular-scale and continuum-scale modeling; multiscale, multi-field, and multi-phase simulations; fracture and damage analysis; AI-based and data-driven methods; inverse design and optimization.
Dr. Dongming Li
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- mechanics
- soft matter
- soft structures
- polymer-based soft materials
- entropy elasticity
- computational modelling
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