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Both animal and plant tissue exhibit a nonlinear rheological phenomenon known as compression stiffening, or an increase in moduli with increasing uniaxial compressive strain. Does such a phenomenon exist in single cells, which are the…
We study the elasticity of cross-linked networks of thermally fluctuating stiff polymers. As compared to their purely mechanical counterparts, it is shown that these thermal networks have a qualitatively different elastic response. By…
Topological constraints can affect both equilibrium and dynamic properties of polymer systems, and can play a role in the organization of chromosomes. Despite many theoretical studies, the effects of topological constraints on the…
Networks of elastic fibers are ubiquitous in biological systems and often provide mechanical stability to cells and tissues. Fiber reinforced materials are also common in technology. An important characteristic of such materials is their…
Understanding how topological constraints affect the dynamics of polymers in solution is at the basis of any polymer theory and it is particularly needed for melts of rings. These polymers fold as crumpled and space-filling objects and,…
I review computational studies of different models of elastic network self-organization leading to the existence of a globally isostatic (rigid but unstressed) or nearly isostatic intermediate phase. A common feature of all models…
A coarse-grained molecular simulation approach originally developed for entangled polymeric liquids is extended to model the mechanical behavior of long-fiber networks. The model, based on the slip-link picture of chain entanglements,…
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…
Entangled states are ubiquitous amongst fibrous materials, whether naturally occurring (keratin, collagen, DNA) or synthetic (nanotube assemblies, elastane). A key mechanical characteristic of these systems is their ability to reorganise in…
Impact of an intruder on granular matter leads to formation of mesoscopic force networks seen particularly clearly in the recent experiments carried out with photoelastic particles, e.g., Clark et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 114 144502 (2015).…
A constitutive model is derived for the time-dependent response of particle-reinforced elastomers at finite strains. An amorphous rubbery polymer is treated as a network of long chains linked by permanent junctions (chemical crosslinks,…
We construct a micromechanical version of an early model for topologically constrained polymers -- a 2D chain amongst point-like uncrossable obstacles -- which allows us to explicitly elucidate the role of topological forces beyond…
By combining continuum elasticity theory and tight-binding atomistic simulations, we work out the constitutive nonlinear stress-strain relation for graphene stretching elasticity and we calculate all the corresponding nonlinear elastic…
Entangled networks of stiff biopolymers exhibit complex dynamic response, emerging from the topological constraints that neighboring filaments impose upon each other. We propose a class of reference models for entanglement dynamics of stiff…
The dynamic-mechanical response of flexible polymer networks is studied in the framework of tube model, in the limit of small affine deformations, using the approach based on Rayleighian dissipation function. The dynamic complex modulus G*…
We consider models for elastic liquids, such as solutions of flexible polymers. They introduce a relaxation time $\lambda$ into the system, over which stresses relax. We study the kinematics of the problem, and clarify the relationship…
We have studied experimentally and theoretically the response of randomly folded hyperelastic and elastoplastic sheets on the uniaxial compression loading and the statistical properties of crumpling networks. The results of these studies…
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.…
A constitutive model is developed for the mechanical response of elastomers at finite strains. A polymer is treated as a network of linear chains linked by permanent (chemical crosslinks) and temporary (entanglements and van der Waals…
Physical experiments can characterize the elastic response of granular materials in terms of macroscopic state-variables, namely volume (packing) fraction and stress, while the microstructure is not accessible and thus neglected. Here, by…