Related papers: On the network orientational affinity assumption i…
We use Monte Carlo simulations to study polymer melts consisting of fully flexible and moderately stiff chains in the bond fluctuation model at a volume fraction $0.5$. In order to reduce the local density fluctuations, we test a…
Significant microstructural anisotropy is known to develop during shearing flow of attractive particle suspensions. These suspensions, and their capacity to form conductive networks, play a key role in flow-battery technology, among other…
A number of recent experiments have provided detailed observations of the configurations of long DNA strands under nano-to-micrometer sized confinement. We therefore revisit the problem of an excluded volume polymer chain confined between…
An applied tension force changes the equilibrium conformations of a polymer chain tethered to a planar substrate and thus affects the adsorption transition as well as the coil-globule and crystallization transitions. Conversely, solvent…
Predicting the behaviour of complex systems is one of the main goals of science. An important example is plastic deformation of micron-scale crystals, a process mediated by collective dynamics of dislocations, manifested as broadly…
Motivated by the observation of the storage of excess elastic free energy - (prestress) -- in cross linked semiflexible networks, we consider the problem of the conformational statistics of a single semiflexible polymer in a quenched random…
We present a tube model for the Brownian dynamics of associating polymers in extensional flow. In linear response, the model confirms the analytical predictions for the sticky diffusivity by Leibler- Rubinstein-Colby theory. Although a…
We study the mechanical stiffening behavior in two-dimensional (2D) cross-linked networks of semiflexible biopolymer filaments under simple shear. Filamental constituents immersed in a fluid undergo thermally excited bending motions.…
In this study, we have utilized a molecular dynamics simulation approach to understand adhesion and friction behaviour of crosslinked polymer networks. We have used breakable quartic bond to model crosslinked polymers. We explored the…
Fujiyabu et al. have experimentally reported that mixing of 3-arm star prepolymers into 4-arm analog improves the toughness of the resultant polymer networks compared to the base network composed of 4-arm star polymers only. For the…
We propose a protocol to model accurately the electromechanical behavior of dielectric elastomer membranes using experimental data of stress-stretch and voltage-stretch tests. We show how the relationship between electric displacement and…
We consider a general preferential attachment model, where the probability that a newly arriving vertex connects to an older vertex is proportional to a sublinear function of the indegree of the older vertex at that time. It is well known…
Ianniruberto and Marrucci developed a theory whereby entangled branched polymers behave like linear ones in fast elongational flows. In order to test such prediction, Huang et al. performed elongational measurements on star polymer melts,…
The scattering function and radius of gyration of an ideal polymer network are calculated depending on the strength of the bonds that form the crosslinks. Our calculations are based on an {\it exact} theorem for the characteristic function…
A statistical mechanical distance constraint model (DCM) is presented that explicitly accounts for network rigidity among constraints present within a system. Constraints are characterized by local microscopic free energy functions.…
Constitutive modeling of dielectric elastomers has been of long standing interest in mechanics. Over the last two decades rigorous constitutive models have been developed that couple the electrical response of these polymers with large…
In this work a new strategy is proposed in order to build analytic and microscopic models of fluctuating polymer rings subjected to topological constraints. The topological invariants used to fix these constraints belong to a wide class of…
When elastic solids are sheared, a nonlinear effect named after Poynting gives rise to normal stresses or changes in volume. We provide a novel relation between the Poynting effect and the microscopic Gr\"uneisen parameter, which quantifies…
At zero temperature, spring networks with connectivity below Maxwell's isostatic threshold undergo a mechanical phase transition from a floppy state at small strains to a rigid state for applied shear strain above a critical strain…
Cross-linked polymer networks with orientational order constitute a wide class of soft materials and are relevant to biological systems (e.g., F-actin bundles). We analytically study the nonlinear force-extension relation of an array of…