Related papers: Criticality and mechanical enhancement in composit…

The mechanical properties of biological materials are spatially heterogeneous. Typical tissues are made up of a spanning fibrous extracellular matrix in which various inclusions, such as living cells, are embedded. While the influence of…

Semiflexible biopolymer networks are commonly found in biological systems, from the cytoskeleton of cells to the extracellular matrix. Such networks often naturally occur as composites, in which various components interact to generate rich…

Soft composite solids are made of inclusions dispersed within soft matrices. They are ubiquitous in nature and form the basis of many biological tissues. In the field of materials science, synthetic soft composites are promising candidates…

Living soft tissues appear to promote the development and maintenance of a preferred mechanical state within a defined tolerance around a so-called set-point. This phenomenon is often referred to as mechanical homeostasis. In contradiction…

An approach to the mechanical behaviour of textile composites at the scale of their constituting fibres, using an implicit finite element simulation code, is proposed in this chapter. The approach is based on efficient methods and…

Living tissues show an extraordinary adaptiveness to strain, which is crucial for their proper biological functioning. The physical origin of this mechanical behaviour has been widely investigated using reconstituted networks of collagen…

Biopolymer networks are common in biological systems from the cytoskeleton of individual cells to collagen in the extracellular matrix. The mechanics of these systems under applied strain can be explained in some cases by a phase transition…

Filamentous bio-materials such as fibrin or collagen networks exhibit an enormous stiffening of their elastic moduli upon large deformations. This pronounced nonlinear behavior stems from a significant separation between the stiffnesses…

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…

Disordered fibrous networks are ubiquitous in nature as major structural components of living cells and tissues. The mechanical stability of networks generally depends on the degree of connectivity: only when the average number of…

Networks of elastic beams can deform either by stretching or bending of their members. The primary mode of deformation (bending or stretching) crucially depends on the specific details of the network architecture. In order to shed light on…

The rigidity of elastic networks depends sensitively on their internal connectivity and the nature of the interactions between constituents. Particles interacting via central forces undergo a zero-temperature rigidity-percolation transition…

Cellularized tissue and polymer networks can both transition from floppy to rigid as a function of their control parameters, and, yet, the two systems often mechanically interact, which may affect their respective rigidities. To study this…

The collective action of actively contractile units embedded in elastic biopolymer networks plays a crucial role in regulating the network's macroscopic mechanical response. Here, we investigate how the macroscopic boundary stress in model…

Flexible mechanical metamaterials possess repeating structural motifs that imbue them with novel, exciting properties including programmability, anomalous elastic moduli and nonlinear and robust response. We address such structures via…

Mechanical metamaterials are periodic lattice structures with complex unit cell architectures that can achieve extraordinary mechanical properties beyond the capability of bulk materials. A new class of metamaterials is proposed, whose…

Disordered fiber networks exhibit a floppy to rigid mechanical phase transition as a function of connectivity. Sub-isostatically connected networks can undergo this transition via straining. Critical exponents governing this transition have…

Mechanical forces influence the dynamics of growing tissues. Computer simulations are employed to study the importance of interfacial effects in tissue competition. It was speculated that mechanical pressure determines the competition,…

Here, we provide an overview of theoretical approaches to semiflexible polymers and their networks. Such semiflexible polymers have large bending rigidities that can compete with the entropic tendency of a chain to crumple up into a random…

Through mechanical forces, biological cells remodel the surrounding collagen network, generating striking deformation patterns. Tethers-tracts of high densification and fiber alignment-form between cells, thinner bands emanate from cell…