Related papers: Root growth and force chains in a granular soil
Although the gravity dependence of granular friction is crucial to understand various natural phenomena, its precise characterization is difficult. We propose a method to characterize granular friction under various gravity (body force)…
Phyllotactic patterns, i.e. regular arrangements of leaves or seeds around a plant stem, are fascinating examples of complex structures encountered in Nature. In botany, their symmetries develop when a new primordium periodically grows in…
We study a scalar lattice model for inter-grain forces in static, non-cohesive, granular materials, obtaining two primary results. (i) The applied stress as a function of overall strain shows a power law dependence with a nontrivial…
The spongy mesophyll is a complex, porous tissue found in plant leaves that enables carbon capture and provides mechanical stability. Unlike many other biological tissues, which remain confluent throughout development, the spongy mesophyll…
Controversy exists regarding whether grain morphology reduces or enhances the drag of a single grain in creeping flows; further complication occurs when orientation dependence for aspherical grains comes into play. To quantify influences of…
Inhomogeneities in deposition may lead to formation of rough surfaces, whose height fluctuations can be probed directly by scanning microscopy, or indirectly by scattering. Analytical or numerical treatments of simple growth models suggest…
Food production needs to increase significantly in 30 years, and water loss from plants may hold one key, especially relevant in a time of climate change. The plant leaf cuticle is the final defence of leaves in drought and at night, and so…
As a granular material is compressed, the particles and forces within the system arrange to form complex heterogeneous structures. Force chains are a prime example and are thought to constrain bulk properties such as mechanical stability…
Compared with classical process-based models, the functional-structural plant models provide more efficient tools to explore the impact of changes in plant structures on plant functioning. In this paper we investigated the effects of…
It has long been recognized that aortic root elasticity helps to ensure efficient aortic valve closure, but our understanding of the functional importance of the elasticity and geometry of the aortic root continues to evolve as increasingly…
Plants are a paradigm for active shape control in response to stimuli. For instance, it is well-known that a tilted plant will eventually straighten vertically, demonstrating the influence of both an external stimulus, gravity, and an…
Tip growth in filamentous cells, such as root hairs, moss protonemata, and fungal hyphae, depends on coordinated cell wall extension driven by turgor pressure, wall mechanics, and exocytosis. We introduce a dual-configuration model that…
One might ask why is it important to know the mechanism of fracture in leaves when Mother Nature is doing her job perfectly. I could list the following reasons to address that question: (a) Leaves are natural composite structures, during…
The evolutionary success of bacteria lies in their ability to form complex surface-associated communities in diverse biophysical settings. However, it remains poorly understood how compliance of soft surfaces, measured in terms of their…
Mathematical models of biological growth commonly attempt to distinguish deformation due to growth from that due to mechanical stresses through a hypothesised multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient. Here we demonstrate…
We propose a novel approach for studying rooted trees by using functions that we will call descent functions. We provide a construction method for rooted trees that allows to study their properties through the use of descent functions.…
The three-dimensional shapes of thin lamina such as leaves, flowers, feathers, wings etc, are driven by the differential strain induced by the relative growth. The growth takes place through variations in the Riemannian metric, given on the…
Based on laboratory based growth of plant-like structures from inorganic materials, we present new theory for the emergence of plant structure at a range of scales dictated by levels of ionization (charge density), which can be traced…
The evolution of various competing cell types in tissues, and the resulting persistent tissue population, is studied numerically and analytically in a particle-based model of active tissues. Mutations change the properties of cells in…
Growth-elasticity is a powerful model framework for understanding complex shape development in soft biological tissues. At each instant, by mapping how continuum building blocks have grown geometrically and how they respond elastically to…