Related papers: Strain localization and yielding dynamics in disor…
Biological processes, from morphogenesis to tumor invasion, spontaneously generate shear stresses inside living tissue. The mechanisms that govern the transmission of mechanical forces in epithelia and the collective response of the tissue…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that the nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin is dramatically altered in the presence of a flexible cross-linker such as the abundant cytoskeletal protein filamin. The basic…
The mechanical response of biological soft tissues is influenced by wall heterogeneity, including spatial variations in wall thickness. Traditional models for homogeneous soft tissues under uniaxial loading predict higher stretch and stress…
We present a new network modeling approach for various thin film growth techniques that incorporates re-emitted particles due to the non-unity sticking coefficients. We model re-emission of a particle from one surface site to another one as…
Live cells have ambiguous mechanical properties. They were often described as either elastic solids or viscoelastic fluids and have recently been classified as soft glassy materials characterized by weak power-law rheology. Nonlinear…
Highly-optimized complex transport networks serve crucial functions in many man-made and natural systems such as power grids and plant or animal vasculature. Often, the relevant optimization functional is non-convex and characterized by…
This work targets the influence of disorder on the relaxed structure and macroscopic mechanical properties of elastic networks. We construct network classes of different types of disorder (length, topology and stiffness), which are…
In this paper, we consider the problem of exploring structural regularities of networks by dividing the nodes of a network into groups such that the members of each group have similar patterns of connections to other groups. Specifically,…
Using large deviation theory and principles of stochastic optimal control, we show that rare molecular dynamics trajectories conditioned on assembling a specific target structure encode a set of interactions and external forces that lead to…
Both animal and plant tissue exhibit a nonlinear rheological phenomenon known as compression stiffening, or an increase in moduli with increasing uniaxial compressive strain. Does such a phenomenon exist in single cells, which are the…
Mixtures of polymers of varying topologies and stiffnesses display complex emergent rheological properties that often cannot be predicted from their single-component counterparts. For example, entangled blends of ring and linear polymers…
In articular cartilage the orientation of collagen fibres is not uniform, varying mostly with the depth on the tissue. Besides, the biomechanical response of each layer of the articular cartilage differs from the neighbouring ones, evolving…
The Extra-Cellular-Matrix (ECM) is a complex interconnected 3D network that provides structural support for the cells and tissues and defines organ architecture key for their healthy functioning. However, the intimate mechanisms by which…
Amorphous solids yield in strain-controlled protocols at a critical value of the strain. For larger strains the stress and energy display a generic complex serrated signal with elastic segments punctuated by sharp energy and stress plastic…
The two approaches to analyzing the large strain behavior of rubbery networks are phenomenologically, using strain energy functions drawn from continuum mechanics, and molecular models, which apply statistical mechanics to compute the…
Many densely packed suspensions and colloids exhibit a behavior known as Discontinuous Shear Thickening in which the shear stress jumps dramatically and reversibly as the shear rate is increased. We performed rheometry and video microscopy…
Disordered spring networks that are undercoordinated may abruptly rigidify when sufficient strain is applied. Since the deformation in response to applied strain does not change the generic quantifiers of network architecture - the number…
An asymptotic interface equation for directional solidification near the absolute stabiliy limit is extended by a nonlocal term describing a shear flow parallel to the interface. In the long-wave limit considered, the flow acts…
Material renewability in active living systems, such as in cells and tissues, can drive the large-scale patterning of forces, with distinctive phenotypic consequences. This is especially significant in the cell cytoskeleton, where multiple…
Usually, the strain-induced softening behaviour observed in the differential modulus $K(T,\gamma)$ of hydrogels has been attributed to the breakage of internal structures of the network, such as the cross-links that bind together the…