Related papers: Non-affine displacements in flexible polymer netwo…
The most profound effect of disorder on the elastic response of solids is the nonaffinity of local displacements whereby the atoms (particles, network junctions) do not simply follow the macroscopic strain, as they do in perfect crystals,…
We present a revised theoretical study of the affine assumption applied to semiflexible networks. Drawing on simple models of semiflexible worm-like chains we derive an expression for the probability distribution of crosslink separations…
We generalize, and then use, a recently introduced formalism to study thermal fluctuations of atomic displacements in several two and three dimensional crystals. We study both close packed as well as open crystals with multi atom bases.…
Previous research on semiflexible polymers including cytoskeletal networks in cells has suggested the existence of distinct regimes of elastic response, in which the strain field is either uniform (affine) or non-uniform (non-affine) under…
Mesh-like structures, such as mucus gel or cytoskeleton networks, are ubiquitous in biological systems. These intricate structures are composed of cross-linked, semi-flexible bio-filaments, crucial to numerous biological processes. In many…
Microgels are elastic and deformable particles with a hybrid nature between that of polymers and colloids and unconventional behaviours with respect to hard colloids. We investigated the dynamics of a soft microgel made of interpenetrated…
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 study the elasticity of random fiber networks. Starting from a microscopic picture of the non-affine deformation fields we calculate the macroscopic elastic moduli both in a scaling theory and a self-consistent effective medium theory.…
Using the theory of elasticity of polymer gels we show that large-scale cross-link density patterns written into the structure of the network in the melt state, can be revealed upon swelling by monitoring the monomer density patterns. We…
The elasticity of disordered and polydisperse polymer networks is a fundamental problem of soft matter physics that is still open. Here, we self-assemble polymer networks via simulations of a mixture of bivalent and tri- or tetravalent…
A systematic coarse graining of microscopic atomic displacements generates a local elastic deformation tensor ${\mathsf D}$ as well as a positive definite scalar $\chi$ measuring non-affinity, i.e. the extent to which the displacements are…
Extra-large deformations in ultra-soft elastic materials are ubiquitous, yet systematic studies and methods to understand the mechanics of such huge strains are lacking. Here we investigate this complex problem systematically with a simple…
We describe a high-resolution, high-bandwidth technique for determining the local viscoelasticity of soft materials such as polymer gels. Loss and storage shear moduli are determined from the power spectra of thermal fluctuations of…
The swelling dynamics of polymer gels are characterized by the (collective) diffusion coefficient $D$ of the polymer network. Here, we measure the temperature dependence of $D$ of polymer gels with controlled homogeneous network structures…
Large deformations of soft elastic beads spinning at high angular velocity in a denser background fluid are investigated theoretically, numerically, and experimentally using millimeter-size polyacrylamide hydrogel particles introduced in a…
Coarse-graining atomic displacements in a solid produces both local affine strains and "non-affine" fluctuations. Here we study the equilibrium dynamics of these coarse grained quantities to obtain space-time dependent correlation…
We investigate the static and dynamic properties of dendrimers diffusing through a network of linear associative polymers using coarse-grained Brownian dynamics simulations. Both dendrimers and network chains are modelled as bead-spring…
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…
Force versus extension curves measure entropic elasticity of single polymer chain in force spectroscopy experiments. A Worm-like Chain model is used to describe force extension experiments with an intrinsic chain parameter called…
We study the mechanics of nematically ordered semiflexible networks showing that they, like isotropic networks, undergo an affine to non-affine cross-over controlled by the ratio of the filament length to the non-affinity length. Deep in…