Related papers: Nonlinear mechanics of triblock copolymer elastome…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been employed to study the formation of a physical (thermoreversible) gel by amphiphilic A-B-A triblock copolymers in aqueous solution. In order to mimic the structure of hydrogel-forming polypeptides…
Designing and fabricating structures with specific mechanical properties requires understanding the intricate relationship between design parameters and performance. Understanding the design-performance relationship becomes increasingly…
Polymeric materials that couple deformation and electrostatics have the potential for use in soft sensors and actuators with potential applications ranging from robotic, biomedical, energy, aerospace and automotive technologies. In contrast…
In layered materials, a common mode of deformation involves buckling of the layers under tensile deformation in the direction perpendicular to the layers. The instability mechanism, which operates in elastic materials from geological to…
The structural properties of a linear polymer and its evolution in time have a strong bearing on its anisotropic stress response. The mean-square bond length and mean bond angle are the critical parameters that influence the time-varying…
Tire wear releases millions of tons of particles annually, bearing immense industrial and environmental impact. However, efforts to mitigate the wear of elastomeric materials remain largely empirical, due to a limited understanding of the…
Disordered athermal biopolymer materials, such as collagen networks that constitute a major component in extracellular matrices and various connective tissues, are initially soft and compliant but stiffen dramatically under strain. Such…
We propose a three dimensional mechanical model of embryonic tissue dynamics. Mechanically coupled adherent cells are represented as particles interconnected with elastic beams which can exert non-central forces and torques. Tissue…
We study the stress distribution in a polymer brush material over a range of graft densities using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and theory. Flexible polymer chains are treated as beads connected by nonlinear springs governed by a…
In this study, a versatile methodology for initiating polymerization from monomers in highly cross-linked materials is investigated. As polymerization progresses, force-field parameters undergo continuous modification due to the formation…
Vitrimers are polymer networks that can undergo bond exchange reactions. They dynamically rearrange their structures while maintaining their overall integrity, thus resulting in unique properties such as self-healing, reprocessability,…
We propose a general method for deriving one-dimensional models for nonlinear structures. It captures the contribution to the strain energy arising not only from the macroscopic elastic strain as in classical structural models, but also…
Using the theory of elasticity of polymer gels we show that large-scale cross-link density patterns written into the structure of the network in the melt state, can be revealed upon swelling by monitoring the monomer density patterns. We…
A simple micromechanical model of polycrystalline materials is proposed, which enables us to swiftly produce grain-boundary-stress distributions induced by the uniform external loading (in the elastic strain regime). Such statistical…
The diffusion of molecules (penetrants) of variable size, shape, and chemistry through dense crosslinked polymer networks is a fundamental scientific problem that is broadly relevant in materials, polymer, physical and biological chemistry.…
We investigate theoretically the effect of polymer tension on the collective behavior of reversibly binding cross-links. For this purpose, we employ a model of two weakly bending wormlike chains aligned in parallel by a tensile force, with…
In this paper we study the elastic response of synthetic hydrogels to an applied shear stress. The hydrogels studied here have previously been shown to mimic the behaviour of biopolymer networks when they are sufficiently far above the gel…
We propose a general multiscale approach for the mechanical behavior of three-dimensional networks of macromolecules undergoing strain-induced unfolding. Starting from a (statistically based) energetic analysis of the macromolecule…
We introduce a mathematical model for the mechanical behaviour of the eukaryotic cell cytoskeleton. This discrete model involves a regular array of pre-stressed protein filaments that exhibit resistance to enthalpic stretching, joined at…
Observations are reported on isotactic polypropylene (i) in a series of tensile tests with a constant strain rate on specimens annealed for 24 h at various temperatures in the range from 110 to 150 C and (ii) in two series of creep tests in…