Related papers: Universal Negative Energetic Elasticity in Polymer…
We derive geometrically linearized theories for incompressible materials from nonlinear elasticity theory in the small displacement regime. Our nonlinear stored energy densities may vary on the same (small) length scale as the typical…
By calculating the linear response of packings of soft frictionless discs to quasistatic external perturbations, we investigate the critical scaling behavior of their elastic properties and non-affine deformations as a function of the…
Thermodynamic behavior of polymer chains out of equilibrium is a fundamental problem in both polymer physics and biological physics. By using molecular dynamics simulation, we discover a general non-equilibrium mechanism that controls the…
A polymer-chain network is a collection of interconnected polymer-chains, made themselves of the repetition of a single pattern called a monomer. Our first main result establishes that, for a class of models for polymer-chain networks, the…
The mechanics of single-chain stretching and rupture are central to understanding the resilience of biological polymers and designing strong and tough soft materials such as double-network gels and multi-network elastomers. In this work, we…
The role of solvent quality in determining the universal material properties of dilute polymer solutions undergoing steady simple shear flow is examined. A bead-spring chain representation of the polymer molecule is used, and the influence…
We examine how the distribution of contour lengths and the high-stretch stiffening of individual chain segments affect the macroscopic shear modulus of flexible polymer gels, using a 2D numerical model, in which polymer segments form a…
We report extensive simulations of the relaxation dynamics of a self-avoiding polymer confined inside a cylindrical pore. In particular, we concentrate on examining how confinement influences the scaling behavior of the global relaxation…
Dilute or semi-dilute solutions of non-intersecting self-avoiding walk (SAW) polymer chains are mapped onto a fluid of ``soft'' particles interacting via an effective pair potential between their centers of mass. This mapping is achieved by…
We report extensive numerical simulations of different models of 2D polymer rings with internal elasticity. We monitor the dynamical behavior of the rings as a function of the packing fraction, to address the effects of particle deformation…
Nematic polymeric networks are (heat and light) activable materials, which combine the features of rubber and nematic liquid crystals. When only the stretching energy of a thin sheet of nematic polymeric network is minimized, the intrinsic…
Linearized elasticity models are derived, via Gamma-convergence, from suitably rescaled nonlinear energies when the corresponding energy densities have a multiwell structure and satisfy a weak coercivity condition, in the sense that the…
We present a theoretical description of the dynamics of a semi-flexible polymer being pulled through a nanopore by an external force acting at the pore. Our theory is based on the tensile blob picture of Pincus in which the front of the…
Taking into account the nonequivalence of fixed-force and fixed-length ensembles in the weak-force regime, equations of state are derived that describe the equilibrium extension or compression of an ideal Gaussian polymer chain in response…
A one-dimensional system of nonintersecting Brownian particles is constructed as the diffusion scaling limit of Fisher's vicious random walk model. $N$ Brownian particles start from the origin at time $t=0$ and undergo mutually avoiding…
The local segmental and global dynamics of a series of polypropylene glycol / silica nanocomposites were studied using rheometry and mechanical and dielectric spectroscopies. The particles cause substantial changes in the rheology,…
We have derived a universal relaxation function for heterogeneous materials using the maximum entropy principle for nonextensive systems. The power law exponents of the relaxation function are simply related to a global fractal parameter…
Unveiling universal non-equilibrium scaling laws has been a central theme in modern statistical physics, with recent attention increasingly directed toward non-equilibrium phases that exhibit rich dynamical phenomena. A striking example…
We study escape dynamics of a double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) through an idealized double nanopore (DNP) geometry subject to two equal and opposite forces (tug-of-war) using Brownian dynamics (BD) simulation. In addition to the geometrical…
We study elasticity of spontaneously orientationally-ordered amorphous solids, characterized by a vanishing transverse shear modulus, as realized for example by nematic elastomers and gels. We show that local heterogeneities and elastic…