Related papers: Super-stretchable Elastomer from Cross-linked Ring…
The statistical mechanics of a ribbon polymer made up of two semiflexible chains is studied using both analytical techniques and simulation. The system is found to have a crossover transition at some finite temperature, from a type of short…
Although the stretching of polymers and biomolecules is important in numerous settings, their response when confined to two-dimensions is relatively poorly-studied. In this paper, we derive closed-form analytical expressions for the…
The interaction of polymers with small-scale velocity gradients can trigger a coil-stretch transition in the polymers. We analyze this transition within a direct numerical simulation of shear turbulence with an Oldroyd-B model for the…
Biological soft tissues exhibit elastic properties which can be dramatically different from rubber-type materials (elastomers). To gain a better understanding of the role of constitutive relationships in determining material responses under…
Using data from contact maps of the DNA-polymer of $E. Coli$ (at kilobase pair resolution) as an input to our model, we introduce cross-links between monomers in a bead-spring model of a ring polymer at very specific points along the chain.…
We study the dynamics of flexible, semiflexible, and self-avoiding polymer chains moving under a Kramers metastable potential. Due to thermal noise, the polymers, initially placed in the metastable well, can cross the potential barrier, but…
We compare the Rubinstein-Duke model for reptation to a model where the boundary dynamics is modified by calculating the viscosity of polymer melts. The question is investigated whether the viscosity is determined by details of the dynamics…
Gels made of telechelic polymers connected by reversible crosslinkers are a versatile design platform for biocompatible viscoelastic materials. Their linear response to a step strain displays a fast, near-exponential relaxation when using…
Viscosity overshoot of entangled polymer melts has been observed under shear flow and uniaxial elongational flow, but has never been observed under biaxial elongational flow. We confirmed the presence of viscosity overshoot under biaxial…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
Twisted and rope-like assemblies of filamentous molecules are common and vital structural elements in cells and tissue of living organisms. We study the intrinsic frustration occurring in these materials between the two-dimensional…
We revisit the classical problem of a polymer confined in a slit in both of its static and dynamic aspects. We confirm a number of well known scaling predictions and analyse their range of validity by means of comprehensive Molecular…
The persistence length of macromolecules is one of their basic characteristics, describing their intrinsic local stiffness. However, it is difficult to extract this length from physical properties of the polymers, different recipes may give…
Molecular dynamics simulations confirm recent extensional flow experiments showing ring polymer melts exhibit strong extension-rate thickening of the viscosity at Weissenberg numbers $Wi<<1$. Thickening coincides with the extreme elongation…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we provide chain-level insights into the dissimilarities in rearrangements of polymers under uniaxial tensile and compressive deformation in glassy and semicrystalline samples of varying chain lengths.…
Ring polymers are an intriguing class of polymers with unique physical properties, and understanding their behavior is important for developing accurate theoretical models. In this study, we investigate the effect of chain stiffness and…
The statistical mechanics of polymer loops entangled in the two-dimensional array of randomly distributed obstacles of infinite length is discussed. The area of the loop projected to the plane perpendicular to the obstacles is used as a…
Vitrimers, an important subset of dynamically crosslinked polymer networks, have many technological applications for their excellent properties, and the ability to be re-processed through plastic flow above the so-called vitrification…
Liquid crystal elastomers are special cross-linked polymer materials combining the large elastic deformability of elastomers with the orientational orders of liquid crystals. This model exhibits markedly different phenomena than the liquid…
Continuum elasticity is a powerful tool applicable in a broad range of physical systems and phenomena. Yet, understanding how and on what scales material disorder may lead to the breakdown of continuum elasticity is not fully understood. We…