Related papers: Fluctuation driven height reduction of crosslinked…
Planar brushes formed by end-grafted semiflexible polyampholyte chains, each chain containing equal number of positively and negatively charged monomers is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. Keeping the length of the chains…
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…
Structure fluctuations and conformational changes accompany all biological processes involving macromolecules. The paper presents a classification of protein residues based on the normalized equilibrium fluctuations of the residue centers…
The mechanical properties of a polymeric network containing both crosslinks and sliplinks (entanglements) are studied using a multi-chain Brownian dynamics simulation. We coarse-grain at the level of chain segments connecting consecutive…
We investigate numerically using the bond--fluctuation model the adsorption of a random AB--copolymer at the interface between two solvents. From our results we infer several scaling relations: the radius of gyration of the copolymer in the…
The thermally assisted detachment of a self-avoiding polymer chain from an adhesive surface by an external force applied to one of the chain ends is investigated. We perform our study in the "fixed height" statistical ensemble where one…
We study stress relaxation in bi-disperse entangled polymer solutions. Shorter chains embedded in a majority of longer ones are known to be oriented by coupling to them. We analyze the mechanism for this both by computer simulation and…
It is commonly accepted that in concentrated solutions or melts high-molecular weight polymers display random-walk conformational properties without long-range correlations between subsequent bonds. This absence of memory means, for…
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…
Combining simulations and theory I study the interplay between bundle elastic degrees of freedom and crosslink binding propensity. By slowly driving bundles into a deformed configuration, and depending on the mechanical stiffness of the…
The actin cytoskeleton in living cells has many types of crosslinkers. The mechanical interplay between these different crosslinker types is an open issue in cytoskeletal mechanics. We develop a framework to study the cooperativity and…
Friction between ring-polymer brushes at melt densities sliding past each other are studied using extensive course-grained molecular dynamics simulations and scaling arguments, and the results are compared to the friction between…
This is the first of two parts investigating the Flory-Huggins interaction parameter chi as a function of composition and chain length. Part I encompasses experimental and theoretical work. The former comprises the synthesis of…
The height-height correlation function for a fluctuating interface between two coexisting bulk phases is derived by means of general equilibrium properties of the corresponding density-density correlation function. A wavelength-dependent…
We analyze a two-dimensional spring network model comprising breakable and unbreakable springs. Computer simulations showed this system to exhibit intermittent stress drops in a larger strain regime, and these stress drops resulted in…
We analyze the freezing and collapse transition of a simple model for flexible polymer chains on simple cubic and face-centered cubic lattices by means of sophisticated chain-growth methods. In contrast to bond-fluctuation polymer models in…
We analyze the shear response of grafted polymer chains in shear flow via coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. Our simulations confirm that the shear response is dominated by the brush's outermost correlation volume, which depends…
We analyze the crystallization and collapse transition of a simple model for flexible polymer chains on simple cubic and face-centered cubic lattices by means of sophisticated chain-growth methods. In contrast to bond-fluctuation polymer…
In this study, we have utilized a molecular dynamics simulation approach to understand adhesion and friction behaviour of crosslinked polymer networks. We have used breakable quartic bond to model crosslinked polymers. We explored the…
Stretching an elastic material along one axis typically induces contraction along the transverse axes, a phenomenon known as the Poisson effect. From these strains, one can compute the specific volume, which generally either increases or,…