I currently study random simplicial complexes. Some papers I read mention that this subject has some applications in material science in the sense that some materials in nature act as a random simplicial complex and hence the study of random simplicial complexes may help us to discover some properties of these materials.
However I failed to find a paper that shows this relation concretely. Does anyone know such paper or has some prior knowledge on these materials and how mathematics is used to study them?
Thanks in advance!
One idea is if you consider the incidence relation between molecules/components of some material in a container and construct a simplicial complex in the natural way from these relations, then by adding more of the material and examining the change in the simplicial complexes you may infer something about how the material interacts with itself structurally.
The paper "Pore configuration landscape of granular crystallization" by M. Saadatfar, H. Takeuchi, V. Robins, N. Francois & Y. Hiraoka is the best place to start that I can think of right now.