Related papers: Curvature regularization near contacts with stretc…
A tethered vesicle, which consists of a cylindrical membrane tube and a spherical vesicle, is produced by a mechanical force that is experimentally imposed by optical tweezers and a micropipette. This tethered vesicle is employed for…
When a ribbon or tube is twisted far enough it forms buckles and wrinkles. Its new geometry can be strikingly ordered, or hopelessly disordered. Here we study this process in a tube with hybrid boundary conditions: one end a cylinder, and…
Solid contacts involving soft materials are important in mechanical engineering or biomechanics. Experimentally, such contacts have been shown to shrink significantly under shear, an effect which is usually explained using adhesion models.…
Rigidity transitions in simple models of confluent cells have been a powerful organizing principle in understanding the dynamics and mechanics of dense biological tissue. In this work we explore the interplay between geometry and rigidity…
When a fluid surface adheres to a substrate, the location of the contact line adjusts in order to minimize the overall energy. This adhesion balance implies boundary conditions which depend on the characteristic surface deformation…
Membrane tubes (spicules) arise in cells, or artificial membranes, in the nonlinear deformation regime due to, e.g. the growth of microtubules, actin filaments or sickle hemoglobin fibers towards a membrane. We calculate the axial force…
The dynamic of contact formation between soft materials immersed in a fluid is accompanied by fluid drainage and elastic deformation. As a result, controlling the coupling between lubrication pressure and elasticity provides strategies to…
Combining analytic calculations, computer simulations, and classical density functional theory we determine the interfacial tension of orientable two-dimensional hard rectangles near a curved hard wall. Both a circular cavity holding the…
We explore how thermal fluctuations affect the mechanics of thin amorphous spherical shells. In flat membranes with a shear modulus, thermal fluctuations increase the bending rigidity and reduce the in-plane elastic moduli in a…
The locomotion of flexible membrane-like organisms on top of curved surfaces appears in different contexts and scales. Still, such dynamics have not yet been quantitatively modeled and no realization of such motion in manmade systems has…
Lipid membrane deformations have been predicted to lead to indirect forces between the objects that induce these deformations. Recent experimental measurements have found an attractive interaction between spherical particles that all induce…
The interplay of membrane proteins is vital for many biological processes, such as cellular transport, cell division, and signal transduction between nerve cells. Theoretical considerations have led to the idea that the membrane itself…
Experimentally measuring the elastic properties of thin biological surfaces is non-trivial, particularly when they are curved. One technique that may be used is the indentation of a thin sheet of material by a rigid indenter, whilst…
This work analyzes the viscous flow and elastic deformation created by the forced axial motion of a rigid cylinder within an elastic liquid-filled tube. The examined configuration is relevant to various minimally invasive medical procedures…
We present contact radius and curvature corrections to the nonlocal contact formulation that take into account multi-particle interactions in elastic confined granular systems. The nonlocal contact formulation removes the classical…
The effects of viscoelasticity have been shown to manifest themselves via symmetry breaking. In this investigation, we show a novel phenomenon that arises from this idea. We observe that when a dense sphere is rotated near a wall (the…
How fish modulate their fin stiffness during locomotive manoeuvres remains unknown. We show that changing the fin's curvature modulates its stiffness. Modelling the fin as bendable bony rays held together by a membrane, we deduce that fin…
Several numerical methods for measuring the bending rigidity and the spontaneous curvature of fluid membranes are studied using two types of meshless membrane models. The bending rigidity is estimated from the thermal undulations of planar…
We introduce a contact law for the normal force generated between two contacting, elastically anisotropic bodies of arbitrary geometry. The only requirement is that their surfaces be smooth and frictionless. This anisotropic contact law is…
We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…