Related papers: Relation between the contact force and local geome…
We study the periodic buckling patterns that emerge when elastic shells are subjected to geometric confinement. Residual swelling provides access to range of shapes (saddles, rolled sheets, cylinders, and spherical sections) which vary in…
We study the relation between a threshold-force based model at the microscopic scale and mode I fracture at the macroscopic scale in a system of discrete interacting springs. Specifically, we idealize the contact between two surfaces as…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
The immersed boundary method is a mathematical formulation and numerical method for solving fluid-structure interaction problems. For many biological problems, such as models that include the cell membrane, the immersed structure is a…
An improved linear model is developed for elasto-plastic and adhesive contact. New correlations are proposed and validated to estimate the key input parameters of the model, including contact stiffness, yield point, maximum pull-off force…
Goal: A limitation in robotic surgery is the lack of force feedback, due to challenges in suitable sensing techniques. To enhance the perception of the surgeons and precise force rendering, estimation of these forces along with tissue…
The elastic and adhesive properties of a solid surface can be quantified by indenting it with a rigid sphere. Indentation tests are classically described by the JKR-law when the solid is very stiff, while recent work highlights the…
Connecting cell behavior to tissue shape and mechanics is a key challenge in the physics of morphogenesis. Cytoskeletal turnover precludes a fixed reference state, and tensions are actively generated independently of strain; so conventional…
We apply a recently developed model of cytoskeletal force generation to study a cell intrinsic contractility, as well as its response to external loading. The model is based on a non-equilibrium thermodynamic treatment of the…
Brain representations of curvature may be formed on the basis of either vision or touch. Experimental and theoretical work by the author and her colleagues has shown that the processing underlying such representations directly depends on…
In this work, we present a computational formulation based on continuum mechanics to study the interaction of fluid membranes embedded with semiflexible filaments. This is motivated by systems in membrane biology, such as cytoskeletal…
Solid interfaces have intrinsic elasticity. However, in most experiments, this is obscured by bulk stresses. Through microscopic observations of the contact-line geometry of a partially wetting droplet on an anisotropically stretched…
Physical interaction with textiles, such as assistive dressing, relies on advanced dextreous capabilities. The underlying complexity in textile behavior when being pulled and stretched, is due to both the yarn material properties and the…
This paper addresses the localization of contacts of an unknown grasped rigid object with its environment, i.e., extrinsic to the robot. We explore the key role that distributed tactile sensing plays in localizing contacts external to the…
We study self-contact phenomena in elastic rods that are constrained to lie on a cylinder. By choosing a particular set of variables to describe the rod centerline the variational setting is made particularly simple: the strain energy is a…
By employing monomer-resolved computer simulations and analytical considerations based on polymer scaling theory, we analyze the conformations and interactions of multiarm star polymers strongly adsorbed on a smooth, two-dimensional plane.…
Thermally actuated twisted and coiled polymer (TCP) artificial muscles exhibit exceptional specific work capacities but are limited by an inherent competition between load-bearing capacity and actuation stroke. To address this limitation,…
The tight binding model is a minimalistic electronic structure model for predicting properties of materials and molecules. For insulators at zero Fermi-temperature we show that the potential energy surface of this model can be decomposed…
The Green's function of the incompressible Stokes equations, the stokeslet, represents the singular flow due to a point force. Its classical value in an unbounded fluid has been extended near surfaces of various shapes, including flat walls…
The mechanical response of elastic porous media confined within rigid geometries is central to a wide range of industrial, geological, and biomedical systems. However, current models for these problems typically overlook the role of wall…