Related papers: Revisiting the strain-induced softening behaviour …
Unlike most synthetic materials, biological materials often stiffen as they are deformed. This nonlinear elastic response, critical for the physiological function of some tissues, has been documented since at least the 19th century, but the…
Catch bonds are interactions whose lifetimes increase under mechanical load, a counterintuitive behaviour that underlies diverse biological processes. Translating this mechanism to synthetic materials offers the potential to create systems…
In a recent publication we established an analogy between the free energy of a hard sphere system and the energy of an elastic network [1]. This result enables one to study the free energy landscape of hard spheres, in particular to define…
Repeated loading of a solid leads to microstructural damage that ultimately results in catastrophic material failure. While posing a major threat to the stability of virtually all materials, the microscopic origins of fatigue, especially…
The resistance to fracture of reversible biopolymer hydrogels is an important control factor of the cutting/slicing and eating characteristics of food gels. It is also critical for their utilization in tissue engineering, for which…
We investigated the surface structure of hydrogels of poly(N,N-dimethylacrylamide) (PDMA) hydrogels synthesized and cross-linked simultaneously by redox free radical polymerization. We demonstrate the existence of a less cross-linked layer…
The fracture and severing of polymer chains plays a critical role in the failure of fibrous materials and the regulated turnover of intracellular filaments. Using continuum wormlike chain models, we investigate the fracture of semiflexible…
A new relaxation approach is proposed which allows for the description of stress- and strain-softening at finite strains. The model is based on the construction of a convex hull replacing the originally non-convex incremental stress…
We recently found that the energy contribution to the linear elasticity of polymer gels in the as-prepared state can be a significant negative value; the shear modulus is not proportional to the absolute temperature [Y. Yoshikawa et al.,…
Strong shear thickening and jamming in dense suspensions are driven by friction as particles are sheared into contact. Control over these frictional interactions can be achieved via particle shape and roughness, and also via the particles'…
We report a computer simulation study of a model gel-former obtained by modifying the three-body interactions of the Stillinger-Weber potential for silicon. This modification reduces the average coordination number and consequently shifts…
Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…
We present an extensive experimental study of mode-I, steady, slow crack dynamics in gelatin gels. Taking advantage of the sensitivity of the elastic stiffness to gel composition and history we confirm and extend the model for fracture of…
Ferrogels, i.e., hydrogels loaded with magnetic nanoparticles, have the ability to deform in external magnetic fields. The precise shape of deformation and the alignment of the gel in the field, however, depend on the interplay of several…
Natural and synthetic multi-component gels display emergent properties, which implies that they are more than just the sum of their components. This warrants the investigation of the role played by inter-species interactions in shaping gel…
We employ a mathematical model to analyze stress chains in thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) with a microphase-separated spherical structure composed of triblock copolymers. The model represents stress chains during uniaxial and biaxial…
Little is known about the role of network rigidity in light-induced structural rearrangements in network glasses due to a lack of supporting experiments and theories. In this report, we demonstrate for the first time the ultrafast…
We study the dynamical rheology of spring networks with a percolation model constructed by bond dilution in a two-dimensional triangular lattice. Hydrodynamic interactions are implemented by a Stokesian viscous coupling between the network…
Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to study the temperature-dependent dynamics and structures of the hydration shells of elastin-like and collagen-like peptides. For both model peptides, it is consistently observed that, upon…
Hydrogels are increasingly recognized as a versatile platform for applications spanning from tissue engineering to soft robotics or flexible electronics. Recent efforts have focused on enhancing and tailoring their mechanical performance to…