Related papers: Dissipation and recovery in collagen fibrils under…
The forces that mixtures of motorized and passive crosslinking proteins collectively generate between cytoskeletal filaments within our cells are the key drivers of active cellular mechanics. Despite their importance, a unified theory to…
Mechanically induced folding of passive cross-linkers is a fundamental biological phenomenon. A typical example is a conformational change in myosin II responsible for the power-stroke in skeletal muscles. In this paper we present an…
A constitutive model is developed for the mechanical response of elastomers at finite strains. A polymer is treated as a network of linear chains linked by permanent (chemical crosslinks) and temporary (entanglements and van der Waals…
In this paper we derive a model to describe the important inelastic features associated with the cyclic softening, often referred to as stress-softening, of soft biological tissue. The model developed here includes the notion of multiple…
A coarse-grained molecular simulation approach originally developed for entangled polymeric liquids is extended to model the mechanical behavior of long-fiber networks. The model, based on the slip-link picture of chain entanglements,…
We study the micromechanics of collagen-I gel with the goal of bridging the gap between theory and experiment in the study of biopolymer networks. Three-dimensional images of fluorescently labeled collagen are obtained by confocal…
Recent work demonstrates that finite-deformation nonlinear elasticity is essential in the accurate modeling of wrinkling in highly stretched thin films. Geometrically exact models predict an isola-center bifurcation, indicating that for a…
In this paper the inelastic features of stress relaxation, hysteresis and residual strain are combined with the Arruda-Boyce eight-chain model of elasticity, in order to develop a model that is capable of describing the Mullins effect for…
We derive the constitutive equations of an active polar gel from a model for the dynamics of elastic molecules that link polar elements. Molecular binding kinetics induces the fluidization of the material, giving rise to Maxwell…
Living tissues show an extraordinary adaptiveness to strain, which is crucial for their proper biological functioning. The physical origin of this mechanical behaviour has been widely investigated using reconstituted networks of collagen…
Cytoskeletal networks of biopolymers are cross-linked by a variety of proteins. Experiments have shown that dynamic cross-linking with physiological linker proteins leads to complex stress relaxation and enables network flow at long times.…
Epithelial tissues are continuously exposed to cyclic stretch. Physiological stretching has been found to regulate soft tissue function at the molecular, cellular, and tissue scales, allowing tissues to preserve their homeostasis and adapt…
Collagen fibrils, cable-like assemblies of long biological molecules, are dominant components of connective tissues. Their determinant morphological and functional roles motivated a large number of studies concerning their formation and…
Elastic and dissipative properties of granular assemblies under uniaxial compression are studied both experimentally and by numerical simulations. Following a novel compaction procedure at varying oscillatory pressures, the stress response…
Discrete numerical simulations are performed to study the evolution of the micro-structure and the response of a granular packing during successive loading-unloading cycles, consisting of quasi-static rotations in the gravity field between…
Mineralized collagen microfibrils in human bone provide its mechanical properties (stiffness, elasticity, ductility, energy dissipation and strength). However, detailed 3D finite element models describing the mechanical behaviour of the…
We investigate the wrinkling dynamics of an elastic filament immersed in a viscous fluid submitted to compression at a finite rate with experiments and by combining geometric nonlinearities, elasticity, and slender body theory. The drag…
We use a combination of original light scattering techniques and particles with unique optical properties to investigate the behavior of suspensions of attractive colloids under gravitational stress, following over time the concentration…
\textbf{Background} Hydrogels are crosslinked polymer networks that can absorb and retain a large fraction of liquid. Near a critical sliding velocity, hydrogels pressed against smooth surfaces exhibit time-dependent frictional behavior…
We introduce an individual-based model for fiber elements having the ability to cross-link or unlink each other and to align with each other at the cross links. We first formally derive a kinetic model for the fiber and cross-links…