Related papers: Stress relaxation microscopy (STREM): Imaging mech…
The vertex model is a popular framework for modelling tightly packed biological cells, such as confluent epithelia. Cells are described by convex polygons tiling the plane and their equilibrium is found by minimizing a global mechanical…
Understanding surface mechanics of soft solids, such as soft polymeric gels, is crucial in many engineering processes, such as dynamic wetting and adhesive failure. In these situations, a combination of capillary and elastic forces drives…
Traction force microscopy is a method widely used in biophysics and cell biology to determine forces that biological cells apply to their environment. In the experiment, the cells adhere to a soft elastic substrate, which is then deformed…
We propose a theoretical framework for dealing with a transient polymer network undergoing small deformations, based on the rate of breaking and re-forming of network crosslinks and the evolving elastic reference state. In this framework,…
Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
We construct a mean-field elastoplastic description of the dynamics of amorphous solids under arbitrary time-dependent perturbations, building on the work of Lin and Wyart [Phys. Rev. X 6, 011005 (2016)] for steady shear. Local stresses are…
To understand how the mechanical properties of tissues emerge from interactions of multiple cells, we measure traction stresses of cohesive colonies of 1-27 cells adherent to soft substrates. We find that traction stresses are generally…
We introduce a class of continuum mechanical models aimed at describing the behaviour of viscoelastic fluids by incorporating concepts originated in the theory of solid plasticity. Within this class, even a simple model with constant…
Brain mechanics is a topic of deep interest because of the significant role of mechanical cues in both brain function and form. Specifically, capturing the heterogeneous and anisotropic behaviour of cerebral white matter (WM) is extremely…
The study is devoted to geometrically non-linear modelling of viscoplastic structures with residual stresses. We advocate and develop a special approach to residual stresses based on the transition between reference configurations. The…
We study the elastic response of bilayer membranes with fixed projected area to both stretching and shape deformations. A surface tension is associated to each of these deformations. By using model amphiphilic membranes and computer…
Mechanical properties of the cell are important biomarkers for probing its architectural changes caused by cellular processes and/or pathologies. The development of microfluidic technologies have enabled measuring cell mechanics at…
We introduce an Active Vertex Model (AVM) for cell-resolution studies of the mechanics of confluent epithelial tissues consisting of tens of thousands of cells, with a level of detail inaccessible to similar methods. The AVM combines the…
We present a hybrid vertex/cell-centred model for mechanically simulating planar cellular monolayers undergoing cell reorganisation. Cell centres are represented by a triangular nodal network, while the cell boundaries are formed by an…
If one folds a thin viscoelastic sheet under an applied force, a line of plastic deformation is formed which shapes the sheet into an angle. We determine the parameters that define this angle experimentally and show that, no matter how much…
We use mesoscale numerical simulations to investigate the unsteady dynamics of a single red blood cell (RBC) subjected to an external mechanical load. We carry out a detailed comparison between the {\it loading} (L) dynamics, following the…
This work presents a novel numerical investigation of the dynamics of free-boundary flows of viscoelastic liquid membranes. The governing equation describes the balance of linear momentum, in which the stresses include the viscoelastic…
A hallmark of biological tissues, viewed as complex cellular materials, is the active generation of mechanical stresses by cellular processes, such as cell divisions. Each cellular event generates a force dipole that deforms the surrounding…
Mechanical stresses in soft materials across different length scales play a fundamental role in understanding the function of biological systems and in the use of artificial materials for engineering soft machines and biomedical devices.…