Related papers: Mechanics of poking a cyst

Experimentally measuring the elastic properties of thin biological surfaces is non-trivial, particularly when they are curved. One technique that may be used is the indentation of a thin sheet of material by a rigid indenter, whilst…

Pressurized elastic shells are ubiquitous in nature and technology, from the outer walls of yeast and bacterial cells to artificial pressure vessels. Indentation measurements simultaneously probe the internal pressure and elastic properties…

Measuring the mechanical properties of cells and tissues often involves indentation with a sphere, or compression between two plates. Previously, different theoretical approaches have been developed to retrieve material parameters (e.g.…

The material characterization of ultra-thin solid sheets, including two-dimensional materials like graphene, is often performed through indentation tests on a flake suspended over a hole in a substrate. While this `suspended indentation' is…

The localized loading of an elastic sheet floating on a liquid bath occurs at scales from a frog sitting on a lily pad to a volcano supported by the Earth's tectonic plates. The load is supported by a combination of the stresses within the…

We consider the point-indentation of a pressurized elastic shell. It has previously been shown that such a shell is subject to a wrinkling instability as the indentation depth is quasi-statically increased. Here we present detailed analysis…

The buckling of a soft elastic sample under growth or swelling has highlighted a new interest in materials science, morphogenesis, and biology or physiology. Indeed, the change of mass or volume is a common fact of any living species, and…

We consider the point indentation of a pressurized, spherical elastic shell. Previously it was shown that such shells wrinkle once the indentation reaches a threshold value. Here, we study the behaviour of this system beyond the onset of…

Motivated by recent experiments showing the buckling of microtubules in cells, we study theoretically the mechanical response of, and force propagation along elastic filaments embedded in a non-linear elastic medium. We find that, although…

A number of current theories of plasticity in amorphous solids assume at their basis that plastic deformations are spatially localized. We present in this paper a series of numerical experiments to test the degree of locality of plastic…

A discrete model for the sintering of polydisperse, inhomogeneous arrays of cylinders is presented with empirical contact force-laws, taking into account plastic deformations, cohesion, temperature dependence (melting), and long-time…

There is a growing interest in producing materials with mechanical behaviours similar to those of internal organs. An artificial tissue may be expected to experience several types of compressive and shear deformation in the course of normal…

Indentation test is used with growing popularity for the characterization of various materials on different scales. Developed methods are combining the test with computer simulation and inverse analyses to assess material parameters…

Thin elastic two-dimensionnal systems under compressive stresses may relieve part of their stretching energy by developing out of plane undulations. We investigate experimentally and theoretically the indentation of an elastic disk…

Structures with artificial mechanical properties, often called mechanical metamaterials, exhibit divergent yet tunable performance. Various types of mechanical metamaterials have been proposed, which harness light or magnetic interactions,…

With a loose reference to problems of penetration in biomechanics (for instance, a nanoparticle penetrating through a cell's membrane or a cell sucked with a pipette), the role of configurational forces is investigated during the process in…

Plasticity modelling has long been based on phenomenological models based on ad-hoc assuption of constitutive relations, which are then fitted to limited data. Other work is based on the consideration of physical mechanisms which seek to…

This paper deals with iteration stable (STIT) tessellations, and, more generally, with a certain class of tessellations that are infinitely divisible with respect to iteration. They form a new, rich and flexible class of spatio-temporal…

Hollow microgels are elastic polymer shells easily realizable in experiments. Recent works have shown the emergence of buckling events in dilute hollow microgels under the effect of an added osmotic pressure. Here, we perform large-scale…

Induced by proteins within the cell membrane or by differential growth, heating, or swelling, spontaneous curvatures can drastically affect the morphology of thin bodies and induce mechanical instabilities. Yet, the interaction of…