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In this study, a versatile methodology for initiating polymerization from monomers in highly cross-linked materials is investigated. As polymerization progresses, force-field parameters undergo continuous modification due to the formation…
Disordered filamentous networks with compliant crosslinks exhibit a low linear elastic shear modulus at small strains, but stiffen dramatically at high strains. Experiments have shown that the elastic modulus can increase by up to three…
The longitudinal response of single semiflexible polymers to sudden changes in externally applied forces is known to be controlled by the propagation and relaxation of backbone tension. Under many experimental circumstances, realized, e.g.,…
Motivated by recent experiments showing that stiff biopolymer gels exhibit highly unusual negative normal elastic stresses, we develop a computational model for stiff polymer networks subject to large strains. In all cases, we find that…
Discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) is a widely employed computational method to study plasticity at the mesoscale that connects the motion of dislocation lines to the macroscopic response of crystalline materials. However, the…
Allosteric effects are often underlying the activity of proteins and elucidating generic design aspects and functional principles which are unique to allosteric phenomena represents a major challenge. Here an approach which consists in the…
Spider silk is a remarkable biomaterial with exceptional stiffness, strength, and toughness stemming from a unique microstructure. While recent studies show that silk fibers exhibit plasticity, hysteresis, and recovery under cyclic loading,…
We present an approach for the data-driven modeling of nonlinear viscoelastic materials at small strains which is based on physics-augmented neural networks (NNs) and requires only stress and strain paths for training. The model is built on…
Many important multi-component crystalline solids undergo mechanochemical spinodal decomposition: a phase transformation in which the compositional redistribution is coupled with structural changes of the crystal, resulting in dynamically…
Disordered elastic networks are a model material system in which it is possible to achieve tunable and trainable functions. This work investigates the modification of local mechanical properties in disordered networks inspired by allosteric…
Live cells have ambiguous mechanical properties. They were often described as either elastic solids or viscoelastic fluids and have recently been classified as soft glassy materials characterized by weak power-law rheology. Nonlinear…
High-density carbon nanotube networks (CNNs) continue to attract interest as active elements in nanoelectronic devices, nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) and multifunctional nanocomposites. The interplay between the network nanostructure…
Composites of flexible and rigid polymers are ubiquitous in biology and industry alike, yet the physical principles determining their mechanical properties are far from understood. Here, we couple force spectroscopy with large-scale…
The past decade has witnessed the development and success of coarse-grained network models of proteins for predicting many equilibrium properties related to collective modes of motion. Curiously, the results are usually robust towards the…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While stress-strain curves for a wide range of temperature can be fit to the functional form predicted by entropic network models, many other…
Evaluating the mechanical response of fiber-reinforced composites can be extremely time consuming and expensive. Machine learning (ML) techniques offer a means for faster predictions via models trained on existing input-output pairs and…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While traditional entropic network models can be fit to the total stress, their underlying assumptions are inconsistent with simulation results.…
The binding of proteins onto DNA contributes to the shaping and packaging of genome as well as to the expression of specific genetic messages. With a view to understanding the interplay between the presence of proteins and the deformation…
Disordered soft materials, such as fibrous networks in biological contexts exhibit a nonlinear elastic response. We study such nonlinear behavior with a minimal model for networks on lattice geometries with simple Hookian elements with…
Soft composite solids, comprising discrete inclusions embedded within a compliant matrix, are emerging candidates for engineering synthetic tissues and soft robotic materials. Current strategies for controlling their nonlinear mechanics,…