Related papers: A universal strategy for decoupling stiffness and …
The relationship between the topological architecture of polymer networks and their macroscopic rupture remains a fundamental challenge in polymer physics. Recent coarse-grained simulations have revealed that the dependence of stretch at…
The mechanical properties of the cell depend crucially on the tension of its cytoskeleton, a biopolymer network that is put under stress by active motor proteins. While the fibrous nature of the network is known to strongly affect the…
Constitutive equations are derived for the time-dependent behavior of particle-reinforced elastomers at isothermal loading with finite strains. A rubbery polymer is modelled as a network of macromolecules bridged by junctions which can slip…
Statistical mechanics is an important tool for understanding polymer electroelasticity because the elasticity of polymers is primarily due to entropy. However, a common approach for the statistical mechanics of polymer chains, the Gaussian…
We introduce a coarse-grained stochastic network dynamics (CGSND) framework for modeling deformation and rupture in polymer networks. The method replaces explicit molecular dynamics (MD) or coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CGMD) with…
Predicting the macroscopic mechanical behavior of polymeric materials from the micro-structural features has remained a challenge for decades. Existing theoretical models often fail to accurately capture the experimental data, due to…
We present a theoretical framework for the linear and nonlinear visco-elastic properties of reversibly crosslinked networks of semiflexible polymers. In contrast to affine models where network strain couples to the polymer end-to-end…
A microscopic model of a surface polymer network - membrane system is introduced, with contact polymer surface interactions that can be either repulsive or attractive and sliplinks of functionality four randomly distributed over the…
Tissues commonly consist of cells embedded within a fibrous biopolymer network. Whereas cell-free reconstituted biopolymer networks typically soften under applied uniaxial compression, various tissues, including liver, brain, and fat, have…
Fibrous networks are ideal functional materials since they provide mechanical rigidity at low weight. Such structures are omnipresent in natural biomaterials from cells to tissues, as well as in man-made materials from polymeric composites…
We study the elasticity of cross-linked networks of thermally fluctuating stiff polymers. As compared to their purely mechanical counterparts, it is shown that these thermal networks have a qualitatively different elastic response. By…
Both animal and plant tissue exhibit a nonlinear rheological phenomenon known as compression stiffening, or an increase in moduli with increasing uniaxial compressive strain. Does such a phenomenon exist in single cells, which are the…
The dynamics of elastocapillary thinning in high molecular weight polymer solutions are re-examined using high-speed digital video microscopy. At long times, the evolution of the viscoelastic thread deviates from self-similar exponential…
An assumption in micromechanical analysis of polymers is that the constitutive polymeric media is non-porous. Non-porosity of media, however, is merely a simplifying assumption. In this paper, we neglect this assumption and studied polymer…
The rigidity of a network of elastic beams crucially depends on the specific details of its structure. We show both numerically and theoretically that there is a class of isotropic networks which are stiffer than any other isotropic network…
We exploit the intrinsic difference between disordered and crystalline solids to create systems with unusual and exquisitely tuned mechanical properties. To demonstrate the power of this approach, we design materials that are either…
We revisit the classical problem of a polymer confined in a slit in both of its static and dynamic aspects. We confirm a number of well known scaling predictions and analyse their range of validity by means of comprehensive Molecular…
The elasticity of rubbery polymer networks has been considered to be entropy-driven. On the other hand, studies on single polymer chain mechanics have revealed that the elasticity of ultimately stretched polymer chains is dominated by the…
We use nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations to verify recent tube-model predictions that associative polymer networks exhibit broad stretch fluctuations during elongational flow. Simulations further show that these fluctuating…
When liquid droplets nucleate and grow in a polymer network, compressive stresses can significantly increase their internal pressure, reaching values that far exceed the Laplace pressure. When droplets have grown in a polymer network with a…