Related papers: A thermodynamic analysis of the spider silk and th…
Spider silk is a remarkable example of bio-material with superior mechanical characteristics. Its multilevel structural organization of dragline and viscid silk leads to unusual and tunable properties, extensively studied from a…
We deduce a microstructure inspired model for humidity and temperature effects on the mechanical response of spider silks, modelled as a composite material with a hard crystalline and a soft amorphous region. Water molecules decrease the…
Living systems are built of multiscale-composites: materials formed of components with different properties that are assembled in complex micro- and nano-structures. Such biological multiscale-composites often show outstanding physical…
Spider capture silk is a biomaterial with both high strength and high elasticity, but the structural design principle underlying these remarkable properties is still unknown. It was revealed recently by atomic force microscopy that, an…
Spider silk is biocompatible, biodegradable, and rivals some of the best synthetic materials in terms of strength and toughness. Despite extensive research, comprehensive experimental evidence of the formation and morphology of its internal…
In this letter, we adopt a new approach combining theoretical modeling with silk stretching measurements to explore the mystery of the structures between silkworm and spider silks, leading to the differences in mechanical response against…
Spider silks are remarkable materials characterized by superb mechanical properties such as strength, extensibility and lightweightedness. Yet, to date, limited models are available to fully explore sequence-property relationships for…
Spider silk possesses unique mechanical properties like large extensibility, high tensile strength, super-contractility, etc. Understanding these mechanical responses require characterization of the rheological properties of silk beyond the…
Spider silk is a remarkable biomaterial with exceptional stiffness, strength, and toughness stemming from a unique microstructure. While recent studies show that silk fibers exhibit plasticity, hysteresis, and recovery under cyclic loading,…
Multiscale phenomena exhibit complex structure-function relationships, and predicting their macroscopic behavior requires deducing differential equations at different scales. The complexity of these equations and the number of essential…
Here, we report the production of silk incorporating graphene and carbon nanotubes directly by spider spinning, after spraying spiders with the corresponding aqueous dispersions. We observe a significant increment of the mechanical…
Spider dragline silk is one of the toughest materials known and understanding the hierarchical structure is a critical component in the efforts to connect structure to function. In this paper, we take the first step in elucidating the…
Spider webs are incredible biological structures, comprising thin but strong silk filament and arranged into complex hierarchical architectures with striking mechanical properties (e.g., lightweight but high strength, achieving diverse…
This chapter introduces evolutionary antifragility as the time-scale interaction characteristics of a natural dynamic system. It describes the benefit derived from input distribution unevenness, based on the emergent system dynamics and its…
An essential element in the web-trap architecture, the capture silk spun by ecribellate orb spiders consists of glue droplets sitting astride a silk filament. Mechanically this thread presents a mixed solid-liquid behavior unknown to date.…
Living systems are thermodynamically open but closed in their organization. In other words, even though their material components turn over constantly, a material-independent property persists, which we call organization. Moreover,…
Unlike most synthetic materials, biological materials often stiffen as they are deformed. This nonlinear elastic response, critical for the physiological function of some tissues, has been documented since at least the 19th century, but the…
The remarkable mechanical properties of spider silk, including its tensile strength and extensibility, are primarily governed by the repetitive regions of the proteins that constitute the fiber, the major ampullate spidroins (MaSps).…
Rigidity is an emergent property of materials - it is not a feature of individual components that comprise the structure, but instead arises from interactions between many constituent parts. Recently, it has been recognized that…
In recent years, the study of complex networks has received a lot of attention. Real systems have gained importance in scientific publications, despite of an important drawback: the difficulty of retrieving and manage such great quantity of…