Related papers: Molecular spring: from spider silk to silkworm sil…
A simple one-dimensional mechanical model is proposed for splitting instability in swollen membranes. The splitting instability occurs by ring constriction. The bifurcation can be both subcritical and supercritical, depending on the…
Motivated by the experimental study of Tayebi et al. [Nature Mater. 11, 1074 (2012)] on phase separation of stacked multi-component lipid bilayers, we propose a model composed of stacked two-dimensional Ising spins. We study both its static…
Segments with the amino acid sequence EKAYLRT appear in natural occurring proteins both in $\alpha$-helices and $\beta$-sheets. For this reason, we have use this peptide to study how secondary structure formation in proteins depends on the…
The mechanical characteristics of fibers (of various materials), as well as of fiber bundles, are of primary importance for the design and the mechanical behavior of textiles, or of fibrous and composite materials. These characteristics are…
Protein folds are built primarily from the packing together of two types of structures: alpha-helices and beta-sheets. Neither structure is rigid, and the flexibility of helices and sheets is often important in determining the final fold…
Under dehydration conditions, amphipathic Late Embryogenesis Abundant (LEA) proteins fold spontaneously from a random conformation into alpha-helical structures and this transition is promoted by the presence of membranes. To gain insight…
Many of the cell membrane vital functions are achieved by the self-organization of the proteins and biopolymers embedded in it. The protein dynamics are in part determined by its drag. A large number of these proteins can polymerize to form…
Collagen fibrils are the most important structural component of tendons. Their crimped structure and parallel arrangement within the tendon lead to a distinctive non-linear stress-strain curve when a tendon is stretched. Microstructural…
Understanding mechanosensitivity, i.e. how cells sense the stiffness of their environment is very important, yet there is a fundamental difficulty in understanding its mechanism: to measure an elastic modulus one requires two points of…
Inspired by active shape morphing in developing tissues and biomaterials, we investigate two generic mechanochemical models where the deformations of a thin elastic sheet are driven by, and in turn affect, the concentration gradients of a…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While stress-strain curves for a wide range of temperature can be fit to the functional form predicted by entropic network models, many other…
Cell crawling requires the generation of intracellular forces by the cytoskeleton and their transmission to an extracellular substrate through specific adhesion molecules. Crawling cells show many features of excitable systems, such as…
The influence of alternating shear orientation and strain amplitude of cyclic loading on yielding in amorphous solids is investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. The model glass is represented via a binary mixture that was rapidly…
Recently, a simple non-interacting-electron model, combining local quantum tunneling via quantum point contacts and global classical percolation, has been introduced in order to describe the observed ``metal-insulator transition'' in two…
While it is widely acknowledged that system-spanning particulate structures contribute to the observed yield stress and shear-thinning in attractive colloidal gels, a comprehensive understanding of the underlying microscopic mechanisms…
Contact unit size reduction is a widely studied mechanism as a means to improve adhesion in natural fibrillar systems, such as those observed in beetles or geckos. However, these animals also display complex structural features in the way…
Mechanically bonded membranes of interlocked ring polymers are a significant generalization of conventional elastic sheets, where connectivity is provided by covalent bonding, and represent a promising class of topological meta-materials.…
We present a study of the bend angle distribution of semiflexible polymers of short and intermediate lengths within the wormlike chain model. This enables us to calculate the elastic response of a stiff molecule to a bending moment. Our…
Wrinkling, creasing and folding are frequent phenomena encountered in biological and man-made bilayers made by thin films bonded to thicker and softer substrates often containing fibers. Paradigmatic examples of the latter are the skin, the…
The development of substrates with a switchable wettability is on a fast pace. The limit of switching frequencies and contact angle differences between substrate states are steadily pushed further. We investigate the behavior of a droplet…