Related papers: The flow of forces through cellular materials
Stress transmission in planar open-cell cellular solids is analysed using a recent theory developed for marginally rigid granular assemblies. This is made possible by constructing a one-to-one mapping between the two systems. General…
Randomly textured polycrystalline materials of constituents with highly anisotropic nature of grains can be considered globally isotropic. In order to determine the isotropic properties, like elasticity or conductivity, we propose a theory…
We study the elasto-plastic behaviour of materials made of individual (discrete) objects, such as a liquid foam made of bubbles. The evolution of positions and mutual arrangements of individual objects is taken into account through…
To understand cell migration, it is crucial to gain knowledge on how cells exert and integrate forces on/from their environment. A quantity of prime interest for biophysicists interested in cell movements modeling is the intracellular…
The cells and tissues that make up our body juggle contradictory mechanical demands. It is crucial for their survival to be able to withstand large mechanical loads, but it is equally crucial for them to produce forces and actively change…
Entangled polymers are deformed by a strong shear flow. The shape of the polymer, called the form factor, is measured by small angle neutron scattering. However, the real-space molecular structure is not directly available from the…
Life is a nonequilibrium phenomenon: metabolism provides a continuous supply of energy that drives nearly all cellular processes. However, very little is known about how much energy different cellular processes use, i.e. their energetic…
We study the elasticity of fibrous materials composed of generalized stiff polymers. It is shown that in contrast to cellular foam-like structures affine strain fields are generically unstable. Instead, a subtle interplay between the…
The theory of disordered elastic systems is one of the most powerful frameworks to assess the physics of multiple systems that span from ferromagnets to migrating biological cells. In this formalism, one assumes that the system can be…
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…
We report experiments on the deformation and transport of an elastic fiber in a viscous cellular flow, namely a lattice of counter-rotative vortices. We show that the fiber can buckle when approaching a stagnation point. By tuning either…
Permeative flows, known for the explanation of the anomalous viscosity (10^5 Poise) in cholesterics at low shear rates, are still under debate due to the difficulty of experiments. Here we use the Surface Force Balance, in which uniform…
Tuning of active prestress e.g. through activity of molecular motors constitutes a powerful cellular tool to adjust cellular stiffness through nonlinear material properties. Understanding this tool is an important prerequisite for our…
Alterations of charges density on membranes (potentials) of plant cells by ion currents lead to disbalance of Coulomb forces compressing membranes and counteracting Hookean elastic forces. It should results in membrane vibrations till…
Micropatterned substrates are often used to standardize cell experiments and to quantitatively study the relation between cell shape and function. Moreover, they are increasingly used in combination with traction force microscopy on soft…
As a streak of dye is advected by a chaotic flow, it stretches and folds and becomes indistinguishable from a one-dimensional idealized material line. The variation along a material line of the total stretching experienced by fluid elements…
Peristalsis is the driving mechanism behind a broad array of biological and engineered flows. In peristaltic pumping, a wave-like contraction of the tube wall produces local changes in volume which induce flow. Net flow arises due to…
The effect of a network of fixed rigid fibers on fluid flow is investigated by means of three-dimensional direct numerical simulations using an immersed boundary method for the fluid-structure coupling. Different flows are considered (i.e.,…
Cell division and death can be regulated by the mechanical forces within a tissue. We study the consequences for the stability and roughness of a propagating interface, by analysing a model of mechanically-regulated tissue growth in the…
We give a description of cell diffusion in a soft tissue, paying special attention to the coupling of force, matter, and microforce balance laws through a suitable dissipation principle. To this end, we cast our framework into a multi-level…