Related papers: Dissipation and recovery in collagen fibrils under…
Myosin II plays a pivotal role in muscle contraction by generating force through the cooperative action of multiple motors on actin filaments. In this study, we integrate the nonlinear elasticity of the neck linker in individual myosin II…
The coil-stretch transition in extensional flows of viscoelastic dilute polymer solutions is known to be associated with a strong hysteresis in molecular conformations and rheo-optical properties. At infinite dilution, hysteresis is caused…
We present a constitutive model capturing some of the experimentally observed features of soft biological tissues: nonlinear viscoelasticity, nonlinear elastic anisotropy, and nonlinear viscous anisotropy. For this model we derive the…
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…
Living matter moves, deforms, and organizes itself. In cells this is made possible by networks of polymer filaments and crosslinking molecules that connect filaments to each other and that act as motors to do mechanical work on the network.…
We identify topological dissipation -- momentum transport along the polymer backbone with Ising-type exponential decay ($\sim \exp(-\Delta n/n_\text{d})$) -- as the missing link connecting atomistic and mesoscale dynamics. Simulations of…
We develop an energy-landscape based elasto-plastic model to understand the behaviour of amorphous solids under uniform and cyclic shear. Amorphous solids are modeled as being composed of mesoscopic sub-volumes, each of which may occupy…
A network of semiflexible biopolymers, known as the cytoskeleton, and molecular motors play fundamental mechanical roles in cellular activities. The cytoskeletal response to forces generated by molecular motors is profoundly linked to…
We present a generic formulation of the continuum elasticity of an isotropic crosslinked active gel. The gel is described by a two-component model consisting of an elastic network coupled frictionally to a permeating fluid. Activity is…
Many cell types exhibit oscillatory activity, such as repetitive action potential firing due to the Hodgkin-Huxley dynamics of ion channels in the cell membrane or reveal intracellular inositol triphosphate (IP$_3$) mediated calcium…
Most of crystalline materials develop an hysteresis on their deformation curve when a mechanical loading is applied in alternating directions. This effect, also known as the Bauschinger effect, is intimately related to the reversibile part…
We have studied the elastic response of actin networks with both compliant and rigid crosslinks by modeling molecular motors as force dipoles. Our finite element simulations show that for compliant crosslinkers such as filamin A, the…
Elastomers are viscoelastic materials and their properties significantly depend on the loading rate. The actual stress experienced by these materials is the sum of equilibrium and dissipative (inelastic) terms. At very low loading rates we…
Our fluid dynamics video shows the response of a layer of viscoelastic fluid to an array of four-roll mills steadily rotating underneath. When the relaxation time of the fluid is sufficiently long, the fluid divides into "cells" with a…
Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate heterogeneous dynamics in amorphous glassy materials under oscillatory shear strain. We consider three-dimensional binary Lennard-Jones mixture well below the glass transition…
We propose a model for the mechanical behavior of protein materials. Based on a limited number of experimental macromolecular parameters (persistence and contour lengths, rate of unfolding dissipation) we obtain the macroscopic behavior of…
Collagen fibrils are versatile self-assembled structures that provide mechanical integrity within mammalian tissues. The radius of collagen fibrils vary widely depending on experimental conditions \textit{in vitro} or anatomical location…
The compressive yield stress of particle gels shows a highly nonlinear dependence on the packing fraction. We have studied continuous compression processes, and discussed the packing fraction dependence with the particle scale…
We present experiments and simulations on cyclically sheared colloidal gels, and probe their behaviour on several different length scales. The shearing induces structural changes in the experimental gel, changing particles' neighborhoods…
Semiflexible polymers such as filamentous actin play a vital role in the mechanical behavior of cells, yet the basic properties of cross-linked F-actin networks remain poorly understood. To address this issue, we have performed numerical…