Related papers: Normal stresses in semiflexible polymer hydrogels

Tissues commonly consist of cells embedded within a fibrous biopolymer network. Whereas cell-free reconstituted biopolymer networks typically soften under applied uniaxial compression, various tissues, including liver, brain, and fat, have…

Normal stresses in complex fluids lead to new flow phenomena because they can be comparable to or even larger than the shear stress itself. In addition, they are of paramount importance for formulating and testing constitutive equations for…

Initial residual stress is omnipresent in biological tissues and soft matter, and can affect growth-induced pattern selection significantly. Here we demonstrate this effect experimentally by letting soft tubes grow in the presence or…

We analyze the behavior of a suspension of active polar particles under shear. In the absence of external forces, orientationally ordered active particles are known to exhibit a transition to a state of non-uniform polarization and…

What can cells gain by using disordered, rather than folded, proteins in the architecture of their skeleton? Disordered proteins take multiple co-existing conformations, and often contain segments which act as random-walk-shaped polymers.…

Surface stress and surface energy are two fundamental parameters that determine the surface properties of any materials. While it is commonly believed that the surface stress and surface energy of liquids are identical, the relationship…

Double network hydrogels show remarkable mechanical performance, combining high strength and fracture toughness with sufficient stiffness to bear load, despite containing only a low density of cross-linked polymer molecules in water. We…

We analyse a generic motility model, with the motility mechanism arising by contractile stress due to the interaction of myosin and actin. A hydrodynamic active polar gel theory is used to model the cytoplasm of a cell and is combined with…

Gels made of telechelic polymers connected by reversible crosslinkers are a versatile design platform for biocompatible viscoelastic materials. Their linear response to a step strain displays a fast, near-exponential relaxation when using…

The properties of a semiflexible polymer with fixed ends exposed to oscillatory shear flow are investigated by simulations. The two-dimensionally confined polymer is modeled as a linear bead-spring chain, and the interaction with the fluid…

This work focuses on the evolution of structure and stress for an experimental system of 2D photoelastic particles that is subjected to multiple cycles of pure shear. Throughout this process, we determine the contact network and the contact…

We use computer simulations and scaling arguments to investigate statistical and structural properties of a semiflexible ribbon composed of isosceles triangles. We study two different models, one where the bending energy is calculated from…

Active dynamic processes of cells are largely driven by the cytoskeleton, a complex and adaptable semiflexible polymer network, motorized by mechanoenzymes. Small dimensions, confined geome- tries and hierarchical structures make it…

Motivated by the organization of crosslinked cytoskeletal biopolymers, we present a semimicroscopic replica field theory for the formation of anisotropic random networks of semiflexible polymers. The networks are formed by introducing…

Active networks made of biopolymers and motor proteins are valuable bioinspired systems that have been used in the last decades to study the cytoskeleton and its self-organization under mechanical stimulation. Different techniques are…

Brush-like structures emerge from stretching of long polymer chains, densely grafted on to the surface of an impermeable substrate. They arise due to the competition between conformational entropic elasticity of polymer chains and excluded…

Gels are an increasingly important class of soft materials with applications ranging from regenerative medicine to commodity materials. A major drawback of gels is their relative mechanical weakness, which worsens further under strain. We…

We have performed surface tension measurements on carbopol gels of different concentrations and yield stresses. Our setup, based on the force exerted by a capillary bridge on two parallel plates, allows to measure an effective surface…

We review continuum elastic models for the transmission of both external forces and internal active cellular forces in biopolymer gels, and relate them to recent experiments. Rather than being exhaustive, we focus on continuum elastic…

Extensibility is beyond the paradigm of classical soft glassy materials, and more broadly, yield-stress fluids. Recently, model yield-stress fluids with significant extensibility have been designed by adding polymeric phases to classically…