Related papers: A Model for Compression-Weakening Materials and th…
The major challenge in determining a hyperelastic model for a given material is the choice of invariants and the selection how the strain energy function depends functionally on these invariants. Here we introduce a new data-driven…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
Elastomers are used in a wide range of applications because of their large strain to failure, low density, and tailorable stiffness and toughness. The mechanical behavior of elastomers derives mainly from the entropic elasticity of the…
The use of machine learning techniques to homogenize the effective behavior of arbitrary microstructures has been shown to be not only efficient but also accurate. In a recent work, we demonstrated how to combine state-of-the-art…
The effective macroscopic response of nonlinear elastomeric inhomogeneous materials is of great interest in many applications including nonlinear composite materials and soft biological tissues. The interest of the present work is…
Gradient structured (GS) metals processed by severe plastic deformation techniques can be designed to achieve simultaneously high strength and high ductility. Significant kinematic hardening is key to their excellent strain hardening…
We address a three-dimensional model capable of describing coupled damage and plastic effects in solids at finite strains. Formulated within the variational setting of {\it generalized standard materials}, the constitutive model results…
The apparently intractable shape of a fold in a compressed elastic film lying on a fluid substrate is found to have an exact solution. Such systems buckle at a nonzero wavevector set by the bending stiffness of the film and the weight of…
The heterogeneous micromechanical properties of biological tissues have profound implications across diverse medical and engineering domains. However, identifying full-field heterogeneous elastic properties of soft materials using…
We apply a recently developed model of cytoskeletal force generation to study a cell intrinsic contractility, as well as its response to external loading. The model is based on a non-equilibrium thermodynamic treatment of the…
Collective behaviors in cellular systems are regulated not only by biochemical signalling pathways but also by intercellular mechanical forces, whose quantification in contractile monolayers remains poorly understood. Here, by integrating…
In vivo and in vitro systems of cells and extra-cellular matrix (ECM) systems are well known to form ordered patterns of orientationally aligned fibers. Here, we interpret them as active analogs of the (disordered) isotropic to the…
We present a minimal continuum model of strongly adhering cells as active contractile isotropic media and use the model to study the effect of the geometry of the adhesion patch in controlling the spatial distribution of traction and…
Animal cells are active, contractile objects. While bioassays address the molecular characterization of cell contractility, the mechanical characterization of the active forces in cells remains challenging. Here by confronting theoretical…
Cells actively probe and respond to the stiffness of their surroundings. Since mechanosensory cells in connective tissue are surrounded by a disordered network of biopolymers, their in vivo mechanical environment can be extremely…
We develop a tensorial constitutive model for dense, shear-thickening particle suspensions subjected to time-dependent flow. Our model combines a recently proposed evolution equation for the suspension microstructure in rate-independent…
Athermal models of disordered fibrous networks are highly useful for studying the mechanics of elastic networks composed of stiff biopolymers. The underlying network architecture is a key aspect that can affect the elastic properties of…
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…
Contraction assay based on surface measurement have been widely used to evaluate cell contractility in 3D models. This method is straightforward and requires no specific equipment, but it does not provide quantitative data about contraction…
Motivated by recent experiments showing nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin cross-linked with filamin, we present an effective medium theory of flexibly cross-linked stiff polymer networks. We model such…