Related papers: Morphogenesis through elastic phase separation in …
Plastic deformation in solids induced by external shear stress is of huge practical interest. Presence of local crystalline order in polycrystals, consisting of many grains, distinguishes its deformation pattern from that of amorphous…
Predicting the large-amplitude deformations of thin elastic sheets is difficult due to the complications of self-contact, geometric nonlinearities, and a multitude of low-lying energy states. We study a simple two-dimensional setting where…
When two types of side chains (A,B) are densely grafted to a (stiff) backbone and the resulting bottle-brush polymer is in a solution under poor solvent conditions, an incompatibility between A and B leads to microphase separation in the…
During the development of an organism, cells must coordinate and organize to generate the correct shape, structure, and spatial patterns of tissues and organs, a process known as morphogenesis. The morphogenesis of embryonic tissues is…
The structural phase behavior of polymer brushes, single-component linear homopolymers grafted onto a planar substrate, is studied using the molecular Monte Carlo method in 3 dimensions. When simulation parameters of the system are set in…
External stress can accelerate molecular mobility of amorphous solids by several orders of magnitude. The changes in mobility are commonly interpreted through the Eyring model, which invokes an empirical activation volume whose origin…
When a flat elastic strip is compressed along its axis, it is bent in one of two possible directions via spontaneous symmetry breaking and forms a cylindrical arc, a phenomenon well known as Euler buckling. When this cylindrical section is…
Eukaryotic cells intrinsically change their shape, by changing the composition of their membrane and by restructuring their underlying cytoskeleton. We present here further studies and extensions of a minimal physical model, describing a…
We study the conformation of a heterogeneous surfactant monolayer at a fluid-fluid interface, near a boundary between two lateral regions of differing elastic properties. The monolayer attains a conformation of shallow, steep `mesas' with a…
We study two closely related, nonlinear models of a viscoplastic solid. These models capture essential features of plasticity over a wide range of strain rates and applied stresses. They exhibit inelastic strain relaxation and steady flow…
Hypothesis: Immiscible liquids are commonly used to achieve unique functions in many applications, where the breakup of compound droplets in airflow is an important process. Due to the existence of the liquid-liquid interface, compound…
For regulated exocytosis, we model the morphology and dynamics of the making of the fusion pore or porosome as a cup-shaped lipoprotein structure (a dimple or pit) on the cytosol side of the plasma membrane. We describe the forming of the…
Recent experiments have exploited elastic instabilities in membranes to create complex patterns. However, the rational design of such structures poses many challenges, as they are products of nonlinear elastic behavior. We pose a simple…
We demonstrate a novel route of spatially organizing the colloid arrangements on the polymer-grafted substrate by use of self-consistent field and density functional theories. We find that grafting of polymers onto a substrate can…
A rectangular plate of dielectric elastomer exhibiting gradients of material properties through its thickness will deform inhomogeneously when a potential difference is applied to compliant electrodes on its major surfaces, because each…
A phase-field model for dealing with dynamic instabilities in membranes is presented. We use it to study curvature-driven pearling instability in vesicles induced by the anchorage of amphiphilic polymers on the membrane. Within this model,…
The mechanics of a flexible membrane decorated with a nematic liquid-crystal texture is considered in a variational framework. The variations on the splay, twist and the bend energy of the nematics are obtained from the local deformations…
We investigate a two-dimensional problem of an isolated self-interacting end-grafted polymer, pulled by one end. In the thermodynamic limit, we find that the model has only two different phases, namely a collapsed phase and a stretched…
Liquid droplets on soft solids, such as soft polymeric gels, can induce substantial surface deformations, leading to the formation of wetting ridges at contact points. While these contact ridges have been shown to govern the rich surface…
The application of stress to multiphase solid-liquid systems often results in morphological instabilities. Here we propose a solid-solid phase transformation model for roughening instability in the interface between two porous materials…