Related papers: Disordered biopolymer filament bundles: Topologica…
The interplay of topological constraints and Coulomb interactions in static and dynamic properties of charged polymers is investigated by numerical simulations and scaling arguments. In the absence of screening, the long-range interaction…
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…
In a tight-binding model of AA-stacked bilayer graphene, it is demonstrated that a bound defect state within the region of continuous spectrum can exist stably with respect to variations in the strength of a perpendicular magnetic field.…
Frames, or lattices consisting of mass points connected by rigid bonds or central force springs, are important model constructs that have applications in such diverse fields as structural engineering, architecture, and materials science.…
Microtubules are stiff filamentary proteins that constitute an important component of the cytoskeleton of cells. These are known to exhibit a dynamic instability. A steadily growing microtubule can suddenly start depolymerizing very…
Previous linear bifurcation analyses have evidenced that an axially stretched soft cylindrical tube may develop an infinite-wavelength (localised) instability when one or both of its lateral surfaces are under sufficient surface tension.…
In eukaryotic cells, motor proteins (MP) bind to cytoskeletal filaments and move along them in a directed manner generating active stresses. During cell division a spindle structure of overlapping antiparallel microtubules (MT) form whose…
Bundles of filaments and motors are central to contractility in cells. The classic example is striated muscle, where actomyosin contractility is mediated by highly organized sarcomeres which act as fundamental contractile units. However,…
Semiflexible polymer models are widely used as a paradigm to understand structural phases in biomolecules including folding of proteins. Since stable knots are not so common in real proteins, the existence of stable knots in semiflexible…
We determine stability boundaries for the wrinkling of highly uni-directionally stretched, finely thin, rectangular elastic sheets. For a given fine thickness and length, a stability boundary here is a curve in the parameter plane, aspect…
An analytical model based on variational principles for a thin-walled stiffened plate subjected to axial compression is presented. A system of nonlinear differential and integral equations is derived and solved using numerical continuation.…
We study the collapse of an axisymmetric liquid filament both analytically and by means of a numerical model. The liquid filament, also known as ligament, may either collapse stably into a single droplet or break up into multiple droplets.…
We present simulations on a binary blend of bead-spring polymer chains. The introduction of monomer size disparity yields very different relaxation times for each component of the blend. Competition between two different arrest mechanisms,…
Proteins must fold quickly to acquire their biologically functional three-dimensional native structures. Hence, these are mainly stabilized by local contacts, while intricate topologies such as knots are rare. Here, we reveal the existence…
We present a stability theory for kink propagation in chains of coupled oscillators and a new algorithm for the numerical study of kink dynamics. The numerical solutions are computed using an equivalent integral equation instead of a system…
Stress-strain relations for random packings of entangling chains under triaxial compression can exhibit strain stiffening and sustain stresses several orders-of-magnitude beyond typical granular materials. X-ray tomography reveals the…
Many biological tissues feature a heterogeneous network of fibers whose tensile and bending rigidity contribute substantially to these tissues' elastic properties. Rigidity percolation has emerged as a important paradigm for relating these…
We numerically investigate and experimentally demonstrate an in-situ topological band transition in a highly tunable mechanical system made of cylindrical granular particles. This system allows us to tune its inter-particle stiffness in a…
Euler buckling epitomises mechanical instabilities: An inextensible straight elastic line buckles under compression when the compressive force reaches a critical value $F_\ast>0$. Here, we extend this classical, planar instability to the…
In this fluid dynamics video we explore an array of different possible dynamics for a flexible filament sedimenting in a viscous fluid. The time-dependent shapes and trajectories of the filament are determined analytically and numerically…