Related papers: Stress management in composite biopolymer networks
Collagen is the main structural and load-bearing element of various connective tissues, where it forms the extracellular matrix that supports cells. It has long been known that collagenous tissues exhibit a highly nonlinear stress-strain…
Soft biological tissues exhibit a remarkable resilience to large mechanical loads, a property which is associated with the strain stiffening capability of the biopolymer networks that structurally support the tissues. Yet, recent studies…
Soft living tissues like cartilage can be considered as biphasic materials comprised of a fibrous complex biopolymer network and a viscous background liquid. Here, we show by a combination of experiment and theoretical analysis that both…
Fibrous networks such as collagen are common in biological systems. Recent theoretical and experimental efforts have shed light on the mechanics of single component networks. Most real biopolymer networks, however, are composites made of…
Soft composite solids, comprising discrete inclusions embedded within a compliant matrix, are emerging candidates for engineering synthetic tissues and soft robotic materials. Current strategies for controlling their nonlinear mechanics,…
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…
The cells and tissues that make up our body juggle contradictory mechanical demands. It is crucial for their survival to be able to withstand large mechanical loads, but it is equally crucial for them to produce forces and actively change…
Many biological materials consist of sparse networks of disordered fibres, embedded in a soft elastic matrix. The interplay between rigid and soft elements in such composite networks leads to mechanical properties that can go far beyond the…
Living tissue is able to withstand large stresses in everyday life, yet it also actively adapts to dynamic loads. This remarkable mechanical behaviour emerges from the interplay between living cells and their non-living extracellular…
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…
The mechanical performance of reinforced composites is strongly influenced at different scales by the stress transferred at the matrix-fibre interfaces and at any surface where material discontinuity occurs. In particular, the mechanical…
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…
Animal cells in tissues are supported by biopolymer matrices, which typically exhibit highly nonlinear mechanical properties. While the linear elasticity of the matrix can significantly impact cell mechanics and functionality, it remains…
Recent studies in mammalian hearts show that left ventricular wall thickening is an important mechanism for systolic ejection and that during contraction the cardiac muscle develops significant stresses in the muscular cross-fiber…
The mechanical properties of the cell depend crucially on the tension of its cytoskeleton, a biopolymer network that is put under stress by active motor proteins. While the fibrous nature of the network is known to strongly affect the…
Multiple polymer networks, such as double-network elastomers comprising a sacrificial and a matrix network, exhibit exceptional mechanical resilience, commonly attributed to the formation of an extended damage zone before a crack can grow.…
Materials driven far from equilibrium can encode memories of past deformations through long-lived structural reorganisations. Such memory effects-reflecting parameters such as deformation direction, magnitude, and duration have been widely…
Fibrous networks are ideal functional materials since they provide mechanical rigidity at low weight. Such structures are omnipresent in natural biomaterials from cells to tissues, as well as in man-made materials from polymeric composites…
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…
Biopolymer Networks play an important role in coordinating and regulating collective cellular dynamics via a number of signaling pathways. Here, we investigate the mechanical response of a model biopolymer network due to the active…