Related papers: Mechanics of pressurized cellular sheets
The twisting and writhing of a cell body and associated mechanical stresses is an underappreciated constraint on microbial self-propulsion. Multi-flagellated bacteria can even buckle and writhe under their own activity as they swim through…
Filamentous bio-materials such as fibrin or collagen networks exhibit an enormous stiffening of their elastic moduli upon large deformations. This pronounced nonlinear behavior stems from a significant separation between the stiffnesses…
Cells exert traction forces on compliant substrates and can induce surface instabilities that appear as characteristic wrinkling patterns. Here, we develop a mechanical description of cell-induced wrinkling on soft substrates using a thin…
Transport of microscopic objects across biological membranes usually involves membrane deformation to enclose the object followed by detachment of the engulfed particle. However, in artificial membranes, this last topological remodelling…
Buckling induced by viscous flow changes the shape of sheet-like nanomaterial particles suspended in liquids. This instability at the particle scale affects collective behavior of suspension flows and has many technological and biological…
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…
In this paper homogenization of a mathematical model for biomechanics of a plant tissue with randomly distributed cells is considered. Mechanical properties of a plant tissue are modelled by a strongly coupled system of…
Reconstituted filamentous actin networks with myosin motor proteins form active gels, in which motor proteins generate forces that drive the network far from equilibrium. This motor activity can also strongly affect the network elasticity;…
We propose a coarse-grained theoretical model to capture the aging of microfluidic devices under different conditions including constant applied flow rate and constant applied pressure gradient. Microfluidic devices that sort cells by their…
We study the shear induced fluidization of amorphous solids subjected to external loading by investigating the relaxation dynamics of the deformed states using computer simulation. A simple shear deformation is employed at constant rate to…
We report numerical investigations of wave turbulence in a vibrating plate. The possibility to implement advanced measurement techniques and long time numerical simulations makes this system extremely valuable for wave turbulence studies.…
Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…
Eukaryotic cells possess motility mechanisms allowing them not only to self-propel but also to exert forces on obstacles (to push) and to carry cargoes (to pull). To study the inherent asymmetry between active pushing and pulling we model a…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the occurrence of inhomogeneous shear flows in soft jammed materials. We use rough walls to impose a simple shear flow and study the athermal motion of jammed assemblies of soft…
We measure the response of open-cell polyurethane foams filled with a dense suspension of fumed silica particles in polyethylene glycol at compression speeds spanning several orders of magnitude. The gradual compressive stress increase of…
The shear rheology of dense colloidal and granular suspensions is strongly nonlinear, as these materials exhibit shear-thinning and shear-thickening, depending on multiple physical parameters. We numerically study the rheology of a simple…
An analytical model of mechanical stress in a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) of a hydrogen/air fuel cell with porous Water Transfer Plates (WTP) is developed in this work. The model considers a mechanical stress in the membrane is a…
A remarkable property of nastic, shape changing plants is their complete fusion between actuators and structure. This is achieved by combining a large number of cells whose geometry, internal pressures and material properties are optimized…
Numerical simulations of thin sheets undergoing large deformations are computationally challenging. Depending on the scenario, they may spontaneously buckle, wrinkle, fold, or crumple. Nature's thin tissues often experience significant…
We consider the elastic energy of a hanging drape -- a thin elastic sheet, pulled down by the force of gravity, with fine-scale folding at the top that achieves approximately uniform confinement. This example of energy-driven pattern…