Related papers: Mechanics of polymer brush based soft active mater…
Active processes in living systems generate nonequilibrium forces that deform embedded passive macromolecules. To understand how such dynamics influence polymer conformation, we study a flexible passive chain in an active nematic fluid.…
We investigate the folding and forced-unbinding transitions of adsorbed semiflexible polymer chains using theory and simulations. These processes describe biologically relevant phenomena that include adhesive interactions between proteins…
Polyelectrolyte (PE) brushes are widely used in biomaterials and nanotechnology to regulate surface properties and interactions. Here, we apply the electrostatic correlation augmented self-consistent field theory to investigate the…
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…
We briefly review recent advances in the hydrodynamic modeling of the dynamics of droplets on adaptive substrates, in particular, solids that are covered by polymer brushes. Thereby, the focus are long-wave and full-curvature variants of…
The ubiquitous appearance of regions of localized deformation (shear bands) in different kinds of disordered materials under shear is studied in the context of a mesoscopic model of plasticity. The model may or may not include relaxational…
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…
In this paper, we report on new experimental results on the effects of in-plane surface stretching on the friction of Poly(DiMethylSiloxane) (PDMS) rubber with smooth rigid probes. Friction-induced displacement fields are measured at the…
We study the equilibrium properties and the wetting behavior of a simple liquid on a polymer brush, with and without presence of lubricant by multibody Dissipative Particle Dynamics simulations. The lubricant is modelled as a polymeric…
Engineering wear models are generally empirical and lack connections to the physical processes of debris generation at the nanoscale to microscale. Here, we thus analyze wear particle formation for sliding interfaces in dry contact with…
Fracture initiation in glassy polymers with no notch is studied together with the evolution at zero stress in the glassy state. Confocal microscopy observations and auto-correlation methods are used to characterize specimens of polymethyl…
We formulate a theoretical model of the shear failure of a thin film tethered to a rigid substrate. The interface between film and substrate is modeled as a cohesive layer with randomly fluctuating shear strength/fracture energy. We…
We present an experimental investigation of the non stationary frictional properties of multicontact interfaces between rough elastomers and rough hard glass at low velocities (<= 200 mu m s^{-1}). These systems, for which the deformation…
We resolve the Schr\"{o}der paradox for PNiPAAm brushes, showing experimentally that swelling at 100\% relative humidity (RH) matches the liquid state. This occurs via a sharp increase in swelling above 98\%~RH, a behavior standard models…
The properties of semiflexible polymers tethered by one end to an impenetrable wall and exposed to oscillatory shear flow are investigated by mesoscale simulations. A polymer, confined in two dimensions, is described by a linear bead-spring…
In this work, we investigate the transient rheological behavior of two soft glassy materials: a clay dispersion and a silica gel, emphasizing their unconventional shear stress build-up behavior under conditions of constant imposed strain.…
We report a dynamical-mechanical study of stress relaxation at small deformation in a natural (polyisoprene) rubber well above its glass transition temperature Tg. We find that an almost complete relaxation of stress takes place over very…
This paper adopts a previously developed activation model of shear thickening, published by the authors, to sterically stabilized colloidal suspensions. When particles arranged along the compression axis of a sheared suspension, they may…
We investigate the dissipative mechanisms exhibited by creased material sheets when subjected to mechanical loading, which comes in the form of plasticity and relaxation phenomena within the creases. After demonstrating that plasticity…
We investigate the stretching response of a thick polymer model by means of extensive stochastic simulations. The computational results are synthesized in an analytic expression that characterizes how the force versus elongation curve…