Related papers: Non-affine displacements in flexible polymer netwo…
The elastic response is studied of a single flexible chain grafted on a rigid plane and an ensemble of non-interacting tethered chains. It is demonstrated that the entropic theory of rubber elasticity leads to conclusions that disagree with…
The thermodynamics and dynamics of supercooled liquids correlate with their elasticity. In particular for covalent networks, the jump of specific heat is small and the liquid is {\it strong} near the threshold valence where the network…
A statistical model of resistor network is proposed to describe a polymer structure and to simulate the real and imaginary components of its ac resistivity. It takes into account the polydispersiveness of the material as well as intrachain…
Solutions of polymer chains are modelled using non-equilibrium Brownian dynamics simulations, with physically associative beads which form reversible crosslinks to establish a system-spanning physical gel network. Rheological properties…
We study the local disorder in the deformation of amorphous materials by decomposing the particle displacements into a continuous, inhomogeneous field and the corresponding fluctuations. We compare these fields to the commonly used…
Polymer network models construct the constitutive relationships of a broader polymer network from the behavior of a single polymer chain (e.g. viscoelastic response to applied forces, applied electromagnetic fields, etc.). Network models…
We perform extensive simulations of a 2D LJ glass subjected to quasi-static shear deformation at T=0. We analyze the distribution of non-affine displacements in terms of contributions of plastic, irreversible events, and elastic, reversible…
We study particle-scale motion in sheared highly polydisperse amorphous materials, in which the largest particles are as much as ten times the size of the smallest. We find strikingly different behavior from the more commonly studied…
In disordered materials under mechanical stress, the produced deformation can deviate from the affine one already in the elastic regime. The nonaffine contribution was observed and characterized in numerical simulations for various systems.…
Networks of filamentous proteins play a crucial role in cell mechanics. These cytoskeletal networks, together with various crosslinking and other associated proteins largely determine the (visco)elastic response of cells. In this letter we…
Recently there has been a surge in interest in using video-microscopy techniques to infer the local mechanical properties of disordered solids. One common approach is to minimize the difference between particle vibrational displacements in…
We develop a model for gels and entangled solutions of semiflexible biopolymers such as F-actin. Such networks play a crucial structural role in the cytoskeleton of cells. We show that the rheologic properties of these networks can result…
Collagen is the most abundant extracellular-network-forming protein in animal biology and is important in both natural and artificial tissues, where it serves as a material of great mechanical versatility. This versatility arises from its…
Glassy polymers are central to engineering applications, yet their viscoelastic response over broad frequency and temperature ranges remains difficult to characterize. We extend non-affine deformation theory by incorporating a…
We show that non-entangled polymers display an elastic-like behaviour at a macroscopic scale (probed at some 0.100 mm thickness) up to at least hundred degrees above the glass transition temperature. This observation, found under…
We question the network affinity assumption in modeling chain orientations under polymer deformations, and the use of the stretch measure projected from the right Cauchy-Green deformation tensor (or non-affine micro-stretches derived from…
Materials characterized by spatially homogeneous elastic moduli undergo affine distortions when subjected to external stress at their boundaries, i.e., their displacements $\uv (\xv)$ from a uniform reference state grow linearly with…
We develop an effective medium approach to the mechanics of disordered, semiflexible polymer networks and study the response of such networks to uniform and nonuniform strain. We identify distinct elastic regimes in which the contributions…
We present dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements of soft polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA) and polyacrylamide(PA) polymer gels prepared with trapped bodies (latex spheres or maghemite nanoparticles). We show that the anomalous…
Phase separation of a liquid mixture embedded within an elastic network is relevant to a wide range of natural and industrial systems, including biomolecular condensates interacting with the cytoskeleton, structural colouring in bird…