Related papers: Dynamic, viscoelasticity-driven shape change of el…
An elastic bilayer, consisting of an equibiaxially pre-stretched sheet bonded to a stress-free one, spontaneously morphs into curved shapes in the absence of external loads or constraints. Using experiments and numerical simulations, we…
The process of self-morphing in curved surfaces found in nature, such as with the growth of flowers and leaves, has generated interest in the study of self-morphing bilayers, which has been used in many soft robots or switchers. However,…
Biomembranes consisting of two opposing phospholipid monolayers, which comprise the so-called lipid bilayer, are largely responsible for the dual solid-fluid behavior of individual cells and viruses. Quantifying the mechanical…
Viscosity is a key property of cell membranes that controls mobility of embedded proteins and membrane remodeling. Measuring it is challenging because existing approaches involve complex experimental designs and/or models, and the…
Exceptionally large strains can be produced in soft elastomers by the application of an electric field and the strains can be exploited for a variety of novel actuators, such as tunable lenses and tactile actuators. However, shape morphing…
Understanding dynamic and complex interaction of biological membranes with extracellular matrices plays a crucial role in controlling a variety of cell behavior and functions, from cell adhesion and growth to signaling and differentiation.…
Dynamically tunable surface textures offer a powerful route to spatiotemporally regulate surface and interfacial properties, enabling emerging applications ranging from adaptive optics to soft robotic manipulation. However, achieving…
In this paper we present a theoretical and experimental study aimed at characterizing the hysteretic properties of viscoelastic materials. In the last decades viscoelastic materials have become a reference for new technological…
The shape of biological shells, such as cell nuclei, membranes, and vesicles, often deviates from a perfect sphere due to an interplay of complex interactions with a myriad of molecular structures. In particular, semiflexible biopolymers…
For the finite element simulation of thin soft biological tissues in dynamics, shell elements, compared to volume elements, can capture the whole tissue thickness at once, and feature larger critical time steps. However, the capabilities of…
Photomechanical liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are responsive polymers that can convert light directly into mechanical deformation. This unique feature makes these materials an attractive candidate for soft actuators capable of remote and…
After a brief introduction to several variational problems in the study of shapes of thin thickness structures, we deal with variational problems on 2-dimensional surface in 3-dimensional Euclidian space by using exterior differential…
We propose theoretical and numerical analyses of smart bending deformation of a dielectric-elastic bilayer in response to a voltage, based on the nonlinear theory of electro-elasticity and the associated linearized incremental field theory.…
The main goal of this work is to clarify and quantify, by means of mathematical analysis, the role of structural viscoelasticity in the biomechanical response of deformable porous media with incompressible constituents to sudden changes in…
Viscoelasticity plays a key role in many practical applications and in different reasearch fields, such as in seals, sliding-rolling contacts and crack propagation. In all these contexts, a proper knowledge of the viscoelastic modulus is…
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…
Characterizing the softness of deformable materials having partial elastic and partial viscous behaviour via soft lubrication experiments has emerged as a versatile and robust methodology in recent times. However, a straightforward…
We consider the hydrodynamics of lipid bilayers containing transmembrane proteins of arbitrary shape. This biologically-motivated problem is relevant to the cell membrane, whose fluctuating dynamics play a key role in phenomena ranging from…
The purpose of this paper is to study the shapes and stabilities of bio-membranes within the framework of exterior differential forms. After a brief review of the current status in theoretical and experimental studies on the shapes of…
Manipulating the shape of nanoscale objects in a controllable fashion is at the heart of designing materials that act as building blocks for self-assembly or serve as targeted drug delivery carriers. Inducing shape deformations by…