Related papers: Elastic instabilities in a layered cerebral cortex…
The elastocapillary instability of a flexible plate plunged in a liquid bath is analysed theoretically. We show that the plate can bend due to two separate destabilizing mechanisms, when the liquid is partially wetting the solid. For…
We investigate the elastic buckling of a triangular prism made of a soft elastomer. A face of the prism is bonded to a stiff slab that imposes an average axial compression. We observe two possible buckling modes which are localized along…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
We consider bifurcations from the homogeneous solution of a circular or square hyperelastic sheet that is subjected to equibiaxial stretching under either force- or displacement-controlled edge conditions. We derive the condition for…
Crackling noise is observed in many disordered non-equilibrium systems in response to slowly changing external conditions. Examples range from Barkhausen noise in magnets to acoustic emission in martensites to earthquakes. Using the…
Spontaneous growth of long-wavelength deformations is a defining feature of active fluids with orientational order. We investigate the effect of biaxial rectangular confinement on the instability of initially shear-aligned 3D isotropic…
Cilia and flagella are hair-like extensions of eukaryotic cells which generate oscillatory beat patterns that can propel micro-organisms and create fluid flows near cellular surfaces. The evolutionary highly conserved core of cilia and…
We study elasticity-driven morphological transitions of soft spherical core shell structures in which the core can be treated as an isotropic elastic continuum and the surface or shell as a tensionless liquid layer, whose elastic response…
Growth and folding in one-layered model tissue sheets are studied in a stochastic, lattice-free single cell model which considers the discrete cellular structure of the tissue, and a coarse grained analytical approach. The polarity of the…
In this study we give a geometrical model which employs the smoothness of nerve fibers as differentiable curves. We show that a nerve fiber may encounter large curvature due to the possible helicial bending and hence it could cause the…
Some biological systems operate at the critical point between stability and instability and this requires a fine-tuning of parameters. We bring together two examples from the literature that illustrate this: neural integration in the…
The buckling instabilities of core-shell systems, comprising an interior elastic sphere, attached to an exterior shell, have been proposed to underlie myriad biological morphologies. To fully discuss such systems, however, it is important…
Epileptic seizures are characterized by abnormal and excessive neural activity, where cortical network dynamics seem to become unstable. However, most of the time, during seizure-free periods, cortex of epilepsy patients shows perfectly…
Shell buckling is central in many biological structures and advanced functional materials, even if, traditionally, this elastic instability has been regarded as a catastrophic phenomenon to be avoided for engineering structures. Either way,…
Anchorage-dependent cells collect information on the mechanical properties of the environment through their contractile machineries and use this information to position and orient themselves. Since the probing process is anisotropic,…
Disordered elastic networks provide a framework for describing a wide variety of physical systems, ranging from amorphous solids, through polymeric fibrous materials to confluent cell tissues. In many cases, such networks feature two widely…
Topological defects are crucial to the thermodynamics and structure of condensed matter systems. For instance, when incorporated into crystalline membranes like graphene, disclinations with positive and negative topological charge…
Disordered biopolymer gels have striking mechanical properties including strong nonlinearities. In the case of athermal gels (such as collagen-I) the nonlinearity has long been associated with a crossover from a bending dominated to a…
Continuum elasticity is a powerful tool applicable in a broad range of physical systems and phenomena. Yet, understanding how and on what scales material disorder may lead to the breakdown of continuum elasticity is not fully understood. We…
Neural avalanches are collective firings of neurons that exhibit emergent scale-free behavior. Understanding the nature and distribution of these avalanches is an important element in understanding how the brain functions. We study a model…