Related papers: Morphologies of compressed active epithelial monol…

Epithelial cell monolayers show remarkable displacement and velocity correlations over distances of ten or more cell sizes that are reminiscent of supercooled liquids and active nematics. We show that many observed features can be described…

Mechanically induced folding of passive cross-linkers is a fundamental biological phenomenon. A typical example is a conformational change in myosin II responsible for the power-stroke in skeletal muscles. In this paper we present an…

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…

We consider the three-dimensional instability of a layer of horizontal magnetic field in a polytropic atmosphere where, contrary to previous studies, the field lines in the initial state are not unidirectional. We show that if the twist is…

Orientational and positional ordering properties of liquid crystal monolayers are examined by means of Fundamental-Measure Density Functional Theory. Particles forming the monolayer are modeled as hard parallelepipeds of square section of…

We show how rigidity emerges in experiments of sheared frictional granular materials by using generalizations of two methods for identifying rigid structures. Both approaches, the force-based dynamical matrix and the topology-based rigidity…

The structure of random sphere packings in mechanical equilibrium in prescribed stress states, as studied by molecular dynamics simulations, strongly depends on the assembling procedure. Frictionless packings in the limit of low pressure…

Disordered filamentous networks with compliant crosslinks exhibit a low linear elastic shear modulus at small strains, but stiffen dramatically at high strains. Experiments have shown that the elastic modulus can increase by up to three…

Biopolymer gels such as fibrin and collagen networks are known to develop tensile axial stress when subject to torsion. This negative normal stress is opposite to the classical Poynting effect observed for most elastic solids including…

Wetting phenomena, molecular protrusions of lipid bilayers and membrane stacks under lateral tension provide physical examples for interacting surfaces with tension. Such surfaces are studied theoretically using functional renormalization…

The nonlinear interactions between flexural and torsional modes of a microcantilever are experimentally studied. The coupling is demonstrated by measuring the frequency response of one mode, which is sensitive to the motion of another…

Soft elastic sheets resting on rigid surfaces develop wrinkles, rucks, and folds due to the combined influence of elasticity, gravity, and contact interactions. Despite their ubiquity, the principles governing their morphology and…

The self-assembly of particles into organized structures is a key feature of living organisms and a major engineering challenge. While it may proceed through the binding of perfectly matched, puzzle-pieces-like particles, many other…

We theoretically explore fluidization of epithelial tissues by active T1 neighbor exchanges. We show that the geometry of cell-cell junctions encodes important information about the local features of the energy landscape, which we support…

Surface tension governed by differential adhesion can drive fluid particle mixtures to sort into separate regions, i.e., demix. Does the same phenomenon occur in confluent biological tissues? We begin to answer this question for epithelial…

We study the flow behavior and unjamming transition in dense assemblies of actively deforming particles that periodically change size, a process that we refer to as breathing. Using extensive molecular dynamics simulations and a…

A lattice of elastic Rayleigh rods organized in a parallelepiped geometry can be axially loaded up to an arbitrary amount without distortion and then be subject to incremental time-harmonic dynamic motion. At certain threshold levels of…

Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…

Amorphous solids tend to present an abundance of soft elastic modes, which diminish their transport properties, generate heterogeneities in their elastic response, and affect non-linear processes like thermal activation of plasticity. This…

We study both experimentally and theoretically the rheological behavior of isotropic bidisperse suspensions of noncolloidal particles in yield stress fluids. We focus on materials in which noncolloidal particles interact with the suspending…