Related papers: Mechanics of fiber networks under a bulk strain

Disordered athermal biopolymer materials, such as collagen networks that constitute a major component in extracellular matrices and various connective tissues, are initially soft and compliant but stiffen dramatically under strain. Such…

Disordered fibrous networks are ubiquitous in nature as major structural components of living cells and tissues. The mechanical stability of networks generally depends on the degree of connectivity: only when the average number of…

Fibrous networks such as collagen are common in physiological systems. One important function of these networks is to provide mechanical stability for cells and tissues. At physiological levels of connectivity, such networks would be…

Filamentous bio-materials such as fibrin or collagen networks exhibit an enormous stiffening of their elastic moduli upon large deformations. This pronounced nonlinear behavior stems from a significant separation between the stiffnesses…

Networks with only central force interactions are floppy when their average connectivity is below an isostatic threshold. Although such networks are mechanically unstable, they can become rigid when strained. It was recently shown that the…

The mechanics of disordered fibrous networks such as those that make up the extracellular matrix are strongly dependent on the local connectivity or coordination number. For biopolymer networks this coordination number is typically between…

The mechanical properties of the cell depend crucially on the tension of its cytoskeleton, a biopolymer network that is put under stress by active motor proteins. While the fibrous nature of the network is known to strongly affect the…

Hydrogels of semiflexible biopolymers such as collagen have been shown to contract axially under shear strain, in contrast to the axial dilation observed for most elastic materials. Recent work has shown that this behavior can be understood…

Athermal models of disordered fibrous networks are highly useful for studying the mechanics of elastic networks composed of stiff biopolymers. The underlying network architecture is a key aspect that can affect the elastic properties of…

The rigidity of elastic networks depends sensitively on their internal connectivity and the nature of the interactions between constituents. Particles interacting via central forces undergo a zero-temperature rigidity-percolation transition…

We present theoretical and experimental studies of the elastic response of fibrous networks subjected to uniaxial strain. Uniaxial compression or extension is applied to extracellular networks of fibrin and collagen using a shear rheometer…

Here, we provide an overview of theoretical approaches to semiflexible polymers and their networks. Such semiflexible polymers have large bending rigidities that can compete with the entropic tendency of a chain to crumple up into a random…

Soft living tissues like cartilage can be considered as biphasic materials comprised of a fibrous complex biopolymer network and a viscous background liquid. Here, we show by a combination of experiment and theoretical analysis that both…

Collagen is the most abundant extracellular-matrix protein in mammals and the main structural and load-bearing element of connective tissues. Collagen networks show remarkable strain-stiffening properties which tune the mechanical functions…

Tissues commonly consist of cells embedded within a fibrous biopolymer network. Whereas cell-free reconstituted biopolymer networks typically soften under applied uniaxial compression, various tissues, including liver, brain, and fat, have…

Collagen networks provide the main structural component of most tissues and represent an important ingredient for bio-mimetic materials for bio-medical applications. Here we study the mechanical properties of stiff collagen networks derived…

As a function of connectivity, spring networks exhibit a critical transition between floppy and rigid phases at an isostatic threshold. For connectivity below this threshold, fiber networks were recently shown theoretically to exhibit a…

Disordered spring networks are a useful paradigm to examine macroscopic mechanical properties of amorphous materials. Here, we study the elastic behavior of under-constrained spring networks, i.e.\ networks with more degrees of freedom than…

Networks of stiff fibers govern the elasticity of biological structures such as the extracellular matrix of collagen. These networks are known to stiffen nonlinearly under shear or extensional strain. Recently, it has been shown that such…

The mechanical properties of biological materials are spatially heterogeneous. Typical tissues are made up of a spanning fibrous extracellular matrix in which various inclusions, such as living cells, are embedded. While the influence of…