Related papers: Nonlinear Poisson effect in affine semiflexible po…
Models of smectic-C liquid crystal elastomers predict that it can display soft elasticity, in which the shape of the elastomer changes at no energy cost. The amplitude of the soft mode and the accompanying shears are dependent on the…
Two series of uniaxial tensile tests are performed on isotactic polypropylene with the strain rates ranging from 5 to 200 mm/min. In the first series, injection-molded specimens are used without thermal pre-treatment, whereas in the other…
The structural properties of a linear polymer and its evolution in time have a strong bearing on its anisotropic stress response. The mean-square bond length and mean bond angle are the critical parameters that influence the time-varying…
Experiments have shown that elasticity of disordered filamentous networks with compliant crosslinks is very different from networks with rigid crosslinks. Here, we model and analyze filamentous networks as a collection of randomly oriented…
A priori assumption in micromechanical analysis of polymeric networks is that the constitutive polymer strands are of equal length. Monodisperse distribution of strands, however, is merely a simplifying assumption. In this paper, we relax…
Molecular dynamic simulation enables one to correlate the evolution of the micro-structure with anisotropic stress when a material is subject to strain. The anisotropic stress due to a constant strain-rate load in a cross-linked polymer is…
Observations are reported on isotactic polypropylene (i) in a series of tensile tests with a constant strain rate on specimens annealed for 24 h at various temperatures in the range from 110 to 150 C and (ii) in two series of creep tests in…
Single-chain elasticity is of fundamental importance in polymer physics, as it underlies many of the unique properties of polymer systems. Recently, there has been interest in characterizing the elastic properties of catenanes, molecular…
Mechanochemical simulations of actomyosin networks are traditionally based on one-dimensional models of actin filaments having zero width. Here, and in the follow up paper, approaches are presented for more efficient modelling which…
The Poynting effect generically manifests itself as the extension of the material in the direction perpendicular to an applied shear deformation (torsion) and is a material parameter hard to design. Unlike isotropic solids, in designed…
The interaction of polymers with turbulent shear flows is examined. We focus on the structure of the elastic stress tensor, which is proportional to the polymer conformation tensor. We examine this object in turbulent flows of increasing…
Materials with J-shaped stress-strain behavior under uniaxial stretching, where strength increases as deformation progresses, have been developed through various materials designs. On the other hand, polymer materials that progressively…
Disordered athermal biopolymer materials, such as collagen networks that constitute a major component in extracellular matrices and various connective tissues, are initially soft and compliant but stiffen dramatically under strain. Such…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked elastomer networks with liquid crystal mesogens incorporated into the main or side chain. Polydomain liquid crystalline (nematic) elastomers exhibit unusual mechanical properties like soft…
We report detailed theoretical investigations of the micro-mechanics and bulk elastic properties of composites consisting of randomly distributed stiff fibers embedded in an elastic matrix in two and three dimensions. Recent experiments…
When tensioned, ordinary materials expand along the direction of the applied force. Here, we explore network concepts to design metamaterials exhibiting negative compressibility transitions, during which a material undergoes contraction…
We study spontaneous deformations of a ribbon made of nematic polymer networks and activated under the action of a mechanical load. We show that when such ribbons are activated appropriately, the deformations produced can pull back and…
Motivated by the observation of the storage of excess elastic free energy - (prestress) -- in cross linked semiflexible networks, we consider the problem of the conformational statistics of a single semiflexible polymer in a quenched random…
This article investigates the effect of using isotropic and anisotropic plastic response functions in the analysis of the elastic-plastic response of unidirectional fibre composites on the meso-scale. Three model problems that use a…
Nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the shear thinning behavior of immiscible symmetric polymer blends. The phase separated polymers are subjected to a simple shear flow imposed by moving a wall parallel to the…