Related papers: Thermal Schwinger Effect: Defect Production in Com…
Cross-linked filament bundles, such as in cilia and flagella, are ubiquitous in biology. They are considered in textbooks as simple filaments with larger stiffness. Recent observations of flagellar counterbend, however, show that induction…
Understanding thin sheets, ranging from the macro to the nanoscale, can allow control of mechanical properties such as deformability. Out-of-plane buckling due to in-plane compression can be a key feature in designing new materials. While…
Twist stiffness and an asymmetric bending stiffness of a polymer or a polymer bundle is captured by the elastic ribbon model. We investigate the effects a ring geometry induces to a thermally fluctuating ribbon, finding bend-bend coupling…
Aiming at the mechanical properties of cross-linked biopolymers, we set up and analyze a model of two weakly bending wormlike chains subjected to a tensile force, with regularly spaced inter-chain bonds (cross-links) represented by harmonic…
Bundles of filaments are subject to geometric frustration: certain deformations (e.g. bending while twisted) require longitudinal variations in spacing between filaments. While bundles are common -- from protein fibers to yarns -- the…
A phenomenological description for active bundles of polar filaments is presented. The activity of the bundle results from crosslinks, that induce relative displacements between the aligned filaments. Our generic description is based on…
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…
We elucidate the elastic behavior of a wormlike chain in 3D under compression and provide exact solutions for the experimentally accessible force-extension relation in terms of generalized spheroidal wave functions. In striking contrast to…
A generalized theory of the self-limiting assembly of twisted bundles of filaments and columns is presented. Bundles and fibers form in a broad variety of supramolecular systems, from biological to synthetic materials. A widely-invoked…
In layered materials, a common mode of deformation involves buckling of the layers under tensile deformation in the direction perpendicular to the layers. The instability mechanism, which operates in elastic materials from geological to…
A model for filament buckling at finite temperatures is presented. Starting from the classical worm-like chain model under constant compression, we use a mean-field approach for filament inextensibility to find the complete partition…
We study the response of F-actin bundles to driving forces through a simple analytical model. We consider two filaments connected by reversibly bound crosslinks and driven by an external force. Two failure modes under load can be defined.…
The insurgence of compression induces wrinkling in actuation devices based on EAPs thin films leading to a sudden decrease of performances up to failure. Based on the classical tension field theory for thin elastic membranes, we provide a…
Subjected to compressive stresses, soft polymers with stiffness gradients can display various buckling patterns. These compressive stresses can have different origins, like mechanical forces, temperature changes, or, for hydrogel materials,…
Two equal and opposite distributed dead loads are applied orthogonally to the axis of an elastic rod in its rectilinear reference configuration, one at the extrados and the other at the intrados, such that the resultant applied force per…
To study the compressional forces exerted by a bundle of living stiff filaments pressing on a surface, akin to the case of an actin bundle in filopodia structures, we have performed particulate Molecular Dynamics simulations of a grafted…
The fracture and severing of polymer chains plays a critical role in the failure of fibrous materials and the regulated turnover of intracellular filaments. Using continuum wormlike chain models, we investigate the fracture of semiflexible…
The relationship between polymer topology and bulk rheology remains a key question in soft matter physics. Architecture-specific constraints (or threadings) are thought to control the dynamics of ring polymers in ring-linear blends, which…
Motivated by recent experiments showing that stiff biopolymer gels exhibit highly unusual negative normal elastic stresses, we develop a computational model for stiff polymer networks subject to large strains. In all cases, we find that…
The quantum vacuum is unstable under the influence of an external electric field and decays into pairs of charged particles, a process which is known as the Schwinger pair production. We propose and demonstrate that this electric field can…