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Many new soft but tough rubbery materials have been recently discovered and new applications such as flexible prosthetics, stretchable electrodes or soft robotics continuously emerge. Yet, a credible multi-scale quantitative picture of…
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…
Despite the huge interest in network resilience to stress, most of the studies have concentrated on internal stress damaging network structure (e.g., node removals). Here we study how networks respond to environmental stress deteriorating…
We investigate how the removal of a single bond affects the fracture behavior of triangular spring networks, whereby we systematically vary the position of the removed bond. Our simulations show that removing the bond has two contrasting…
Low-connectivity polymer networks were recently found to behave auxetically when subjected to small tensions, that is, their Poisson's ratio $\nu$ becomes negative. In addition, for specific state points, numerical simulations revealed that…
We consider the rupture dynamics of a homopolymer chain pulled at one end at a constant loading rate. Our model of the breakable polymer is related to the Rouse chain, with the only difference that the interaction between the monomers is…
An assumption in micromechanical analysis of polymers is that the constitutive polymeric media is non-porous. Non-porosity of media, however, is merely a simplifying assumption. In this paper, we neglect this assumption and studied polymer…
Biopolymer networks from the intracellular to tissue scale display high rigidity and tensile stress while having coordinations well below the normal threshold for mechanical rigidity. The elastic filaments in these networks are often…
We consider the thermal breakage of a tethered polymer chain of discrete segments coupled by Morse potentials under constant tensile stress. The chain dynamics at the onset of fracture is studied analytically by Kramers-Langer…
We study the elastic properties of a single A/B copolymer chain with a specific sequence. We predict a rich structure in the force extension relations which can be addressed to the sequence. The variational method is introduced to probe…
We study experimentally the fracture mechanisms of a model cohesive granular medium consisting of glass beads held together by solidified polymer bridges. The elastic response of this material can be controlled by changing the cross-linking…
Polymer chains decorated with a fraction of monomers capable of forming reversible bonds form transient polymer networks that are important in soft and biological systems. If chains are flexible and the attractive monomers are all of the…
The toughness of a polymer material can increase significantly if two networks are combined into one material. This toughening effect is a consequence of a transition from a brittle to a ductile failure response. Although this transition…
When injected through a contraction, high molecular weight polymer solutions exhibit a sharp increase of apparent viscosity which originates from stretching polymer chains above a critical extension rate. This chain stretching can also…
The breakage of a polymer chain of segments, coupled by anharmonic bonds with applied constant external tensile force is studied by means of Molecular Dynamics simulation. We show that the mean life time of the chain becomes progressively…
Live cells have ambiguous mechanical properties. They were often described as either elastic solids or viscoelastic fluids and have recently been classified as soft glassy materials characterized by weak power-law rheology. Nonlinear…
We introduce an entropic network model for copolymer elastomers based on the evolution of microscopic chain conformations during deformation. We show that the stress results from additive contributions due to chain stretch at the global as…
Usually, the strain-induced softening behaviour observed in the differential modulus $K(T,\gamma)$ of hydrogels has been attributed to the breakage of internal structures of the network, such as the cross-links that bind together the…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While traditional entropic network models can be fit to the total stress, their underlying assumptions are inconsistent with simulation results.…
We enumerate all minimal energy packings (MEPs) for small single linear and ring polymers composed of spherical monomers with contact attractions and hard-core repulsions, and compare them to corresponding results for monomer packings. We…