Related papers: Undulations in a weakly interacting mechanically g…
We study the formation of high energy tails in a one-dimensional kinetic model for granular gases, the so-called Inelastic Maxwell Model. We introduce a time- discretized version of the stochastic process, and show that continuous time…
Microscopic biological systems operate far from equilibrium, are subject to strong fluctuations, and are composed of many coupled components with interactions varying in nature and strength. Researchers are actively investigating the…
Active gels are a class of biologically-relevant material containing embedded agents that spontaneously generate forces acting on a sparse filament network. In vitro experiments of protein filaments and molecular motors have revealed a…
The adhesive contact between elastic solids with randomly rough, self affine fractal surfaces is studied by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The interfacial binding energy obtained from the simulations of nominally flat and curved…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study structure formation in simple model polymer chains that are subject to excluded volume and torsional interactions. The changing conformations exhibited by chains of different lengths under…
High speed machining has been improved thanks to considerable advancement on the tools (optimum geometry, harder materials), on machined materials (increased workability and machining capacity for harder workpieces) and finally on the…
We investigate the work dissipated during the irreversible unfolding of single molecules by mechanical force, using the simplest model necessary to represent experimental data. The model consists of two levels (folded and unfolded states)…
Molecular motors perform active movements along cytoskeletal filaments and drive the traffic of organelles and other cargo particles in cells. In contrast to the macroscopic traffic of cars, however, the traffic of molecular motors is…
Three coarse-grained molecular dynamics (MD) models are investigated with the aim of developing and analyzing multiscale methods which use MD simulations in parts of the computational domain and (less detailed) Brownian dynamics (BD)…
We examine the nonequilibrium production of topological defects -- braids -- in semiflexible filament bundles under cycles of compression and tension. During these cycles, the period of compression facilitates the thermally activated pair…
Wrinkling of an inextensible elastic lining of an inner-lined tube under imposed pressure is considered. A simple equation modeling the elastic properties of the lining, the pressure, and the soft-substrate forces is derived. This equation…
Expressions for intermolecular forces and torques, derived from pair potentials between rigid non-spherical units, are presented. The aim is to give compact and clear expressions, which are easily generalised, and which minimise the risk of…
We analyze the effect of an external electric field on the electronic structure of molecules which have been recently studied as molecular wires or diodes. We use a self-consistent tight binding technique which provides results in good…
We simulate a two dimensional model of self-propelled particles confined by a deformable boundary. The particles tend to accumulate near the boundary and the shape of the boundary deforms upon the collisions. We find that there are two…
In single-molecule experiments, the dynamics of molecular motors are often observed indirectly by measuring the trajectory of an attached bead in a motor-bead assay. In this work, we propose a method to extract the step size and stalling…
Mergoassociation of two ultracold atoms to form a weakly bound molecule can occur when two optical traps that each contain a single atom are merged. Molecule formation occurs at an avoided crossing between a molecular state and the lowest…
We report a molecular dynamics study of the contact between a rigid solid with a randomly rough surface and an elastic block with a flat surface. We study the contact area and the interfacial separation from small contact (low load) to full…
The effect of self-generated tension in the backbone of a bottle-brush (BB) macromolecule, adsorbed on an attractive surface, is studied by means of Molecular Dynamics simulations of a coarse-grained bead-spring model in the good solvent…
Biological adhesion often involves several pairs of specific receptor-ligand molecules. Using rate equations, we study theoretically the rupture of such multiple parallel bonds under dynamic loading assisted by thermal activation. For a…
Cells and tissues exert forces and can actively change shape. This strikingly autonomous behavior is powered by the cytoskeleton, which includes an active gel of actin filaments, crosslinks, and myosin molecular motors. Although individual…