Related papers: From Microscale Variations to Macroscopic Effects:…
Shape-morphing networks of mesoscale filaments are a common hierarchical feature in biology and hold significant potential for a range of technological applications, from micro-muscles to shape-morphing optical devices. Here, we demonstrate…
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…
Force transmission at large length scales is crucial for such biological functions as cell motility and morphogenesis. The networks that transmit these forces are malleable, patterned by active forces generated at the microscale by…
Large-scale force generation is essential for biological functions such as cell motility, embryonic development, and muscle contraction. In these processes, forces generated at the molecular level by motor proteins are transmitted by…
The study of interdependent networks has recently experienced a boost with the development of experimentally testable materials that physically realize their critical behaviors, calling for systematic studies that go beyond the percolation…
Internally generated active stresses drive soft materials into architectures inaccessible to thermal self-assembly. We use a microtubule-based active fluid to assemble and irreversibly restructure actin-fascin networks. Subsequently, we…
We propose a two-scale model to resolve essential features of developmental tissue deformations. The model couples individual cellular behavior to the mechanics at tissue scale. This is realized by a multiphase-field model addressing the…
Understanding conformational change is crucial for programming and controlling the function of many mechanical systems such as allosteric enzymes and tunable metamaterials. Of particular interest is the relationship between the network…
The mechanical properties of a thin, planar material, perfused by an embedded flow network, can be changed locally and globally by the fluid transport and storage, resulting in small or large-scale deformation, such as out-of-plane…
The hygro-thermo-expansive response of fibrous networks involves deformation phenomena at multiple length scales. The moisture or temperature induced expansion of individual fibres is transmitted in the network through the inter-fibre…
We consider two (2D) and three (3D) dimensional granular systems exposed to compression, and ask what is the influence of the number of physical dimensions on the properties of the interaction networks that spontaneously form as these…
Networks of elastic beams can deform either by stretching or bending of their members. The primary mode of deformation (bending or stretching) crucially depends on the specific details of the network architecture. In order to shed light on…
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…
Hierarchically modular organization is a canonical network topology that is evolutionarily conserved in the nervous systems of animals. Within the network, neurons form directional connections defined by the growth of their axonal…
Many fibrous materials are modeled as elastic networks featuring a substantial separation between the stiffness scales that characterize different microscopic deformation modes of the network's constituents. This scale separation has been…
We provide a numerical study of the macroscopic model of [3] derived from an agent-based model for a system of particles interacting through a dynamical network of links. Assuming that the network remodelling process is very fast, the…
Biological cells sense and respond to mechanical forces, but how such a mechanosensing proccess takes place in a nonlinear inhomogeneous fibrous matrix remains unknown. We show that cells in a fibrous matrix induce deformation fields that…
Mitochondrial networks exhibit a variety of complex behaviors, including coordinated cell-wide oscillations of energy states as well as a phase transition (depolarization) in response to oxidative stress. Since functional and structural…
We investigate wrinkling of two-dimensional random and triangular semiflexible polymer networks under shear. Both types of semiflexible networks exhibit wrinkling above a small critical shear angle, which scales with an exponent of the…
The percolation phase transition in complex network systems attracts much attention and has numerous applications in various research fields. Finite size effects smooth the transition and make it difficult to predict the critical point of…