Related papers: Force distributions and force chains in random sti…
Epithelial cell layers on soft elastic substrates or pillar arrays are commonly used as model systems for investigating the role of force in tissue growth, maintenance and repair. Here we show analytically that the experimentally observed…
We employ simulations of model proteins to study folding on rugged energy landscapes. We construct ``first-passage'' networks as the system transitions from unfolded to native states. The nodes and bonds in these networks correspond to…
While actin bundles are used by living cells for structural fortification, the microscopic origin of the elasticity of bundled networks is not understood. Here, we show that above a critical concentration of the actin binding protein…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that the nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin is dramatically altered in the presence of a flexible cross-linker such as the abundant cytoskeletal protein filamin. The basic…
Biological cells embedded in fibrous matrices have been observed to form inter-cellular bands of dense and aligned fibers, through which they mechanically interact over long distances. Such matrix-mediated cellular interactions have been…
For packings of hard but not perfectly rigid particles, the length scales that govern the packing geometry and the contact forces are well separated. This separation of length scales is explored in the force network ensemble, where one…
A load applied to a jammed frictional granular system will be localized into a network of force chains making inter-particle connections throughout the system. Because such systems are typically under-constrained, the observed force network…
Experiments have shown that elasticity of disordered filamentous networks with compliant crosslinks is very different from networks with rigid crosslinks. Here, we model and analyze filamentous networks as a collection of randomly oriented…
We characterize the force state of shear-loaded granular matter by relating the macroscopic stress to statistical properties of the force network. The purely repulsive nature of the interaction between grains naturally provides an upper…
Soft living tissues like cartilage can be considered as biphasic materials comprised of a fibrous complex biopolymer network and a viscous background liquid. Here, we show by a combination of experiment and theoretical analysis that both…
Robustness of distributed routing policies is studied for dynamical flow networks, with respect to adversarial disturbances that reduce the link flow capacities. A dynamical flow network is modeled as a system of ordinary differential…
Proportional fairness is a popular service allocation mechanism to describe and analyze the performance of data networks at flow level. Recently, several authors have shown that the invariant distribution of such networks admits a product…
Here, we provide an overview of theoretical approaches to semiflexible polymers and their networks. Such semiflexible polymers have large bending rigidities that can compete with the entropic tendency of a chain to crumple up into a random…
We describe experiments that probe the response to a point force of 2D granular systems under a variety of conditions. Using photoelastic particles to determine forces at the grain scale, we experimentally show that disorder, packing…
We review the physical properties of macromolecular networks, consisting of semiflexible polymers such as actin. We start by giving a theoretical analysis of the conformational statistics and mechanical response of single filaments.…
Semiflexible polymers such as filamentous actin play a vital role in the mechanical behavior of cells, yet the basic properties of cross-linked F-actin networks remain poorly understood. To address this issue, we have performed numerical…
We present numerical simulations of acoustic wave propagation in confined granular systems consisting of particles interacting with the three-dimensional Hertz-Mindlin force law. The response to a short mechanical excitation on one side of…
In the present letter a method to find a proper expression for the force distribution inside a granular sample in static equilibrium is proposed. The method is based in statistical mechanics and the force distribution is obtained by…
We study the deflection and fluctuations of a clamped elastic fiber embedded in 2D foam under quasistatic flow. At all times, the fiber conformation results from the elasto-capillary interactions with the foam. We independently measure the…
Although the stretching of polymers and biomolecules is important in numerous settings, their response when confined to two-dimensions is relatively poorly-studied. In this paper, we derive closed-form analytical expressions for the…