Related papers: Why is the strength of an elastomeric polymer netw…
The transport of solvent molecules through soft, swollen networks is critical in both natural and engineered systems. While this poroelastic flow has traditionally been explored in networks where the mesh size is comparable to the solvent…
We study the mechanical and conformational properties of networks of helical polymers with a combination of Monte Carlo simulations based on the Wang-Landau algorithm and the Three-chain Model. We find that the stress-strain behavior of…
The results obtained from molecular dynamics simulations of the friction at an interface between polymer melts and weakly attractive crystalline surfaces are reported. We consider a coarse-grained bead-spring model of linear chains with…
Using the bond fluctuation model we study polymer networks obtained by endlinking of symmetric 4-arm star polymers. We consider two types of systems. Solutions of one type (A) of star polymers and solution of two types (A,B) of star polymer…
Two-dimensional fullerene networks have been synthesized in several forms [Hou et al., Nature 606, 507 (2022)], and it is unknown which monolayer form is stable at ambient condition. Using first principles calculations, I show that the…
Here, we provide an overview of theoretical approaches to semiflexible polymers and their networks. Such semiflexible polymers have large bending rigidities that can compete with the entropic tendency of a chain to crumple up into a random…
Phase separation has recently emerged as an important organizational principle in the dense and heterogeneous environment within living cells. Here, we use a synthetic system to show that compressive stresses in a polymer network suppress…
The classical rheological theories of entangled polymeric liquids are built upon two pillars: Gaussian statistics of entanglement strands and the assumption that the stress arises exclusively from the change of intramolecular configuration…
The elastic modulus $G$ of a polymer network depends notably on parameters such as the initial concentration of the monomers before the synthesis ($\rho_0$), the density of the cross-linker, or the topology of the network. Understanding how…
We present a theory for the elasticity of cross-linked stiff polymer networks. Stiff polymers, unlike their flexible counterparts, are highly anisotropic elastic objects. Similar to mechanical beams stiff polymers easily deform in bending,…
This paper examines the impact of static sparsity on the robustness of a trained network to weight perturbations, data corruption, and adversarial examples. We show that, up to a certain sparsity achieved by increasing network width and…
The dynamics of elastocapillary thinning in high molecular weight polymer solutions are re-examined using high-speed digital video microscopy. At long times, the evolution of the viscoelastic thread deviates from self-similar exponential…
Collagen networks provide the main structural component of most tissues and represent an important ingredient for bio-mimetic materials for bio-medical applications. Here we study the mechanical properties of stiff collagen networks derived…
In some recent experiments on entangled polymers of stress growth in startup of fast shear flows an undershoot in the shear stress is observed following the overshoot, i.e., before approaching the steady state. Whereas tumbling of the…
Disordered filamentous networks with compliant crosslinks exhibit a low linear elastic shear modulus at small strains, but stiffen dramatically at high strains. Experiments have shown that the elastic modulus can increase by up to three…
This report deals with the correlation between the mechanical strength and thermal stability of systems extending from monatomic chains to surface skins and solids over the whole range of sizes with emphasis on the significance of atomic…
A complete understanding of real networks requires us to understand the consequences of the uneven interaction strengths between a system's components. Here we use the minimum spanning tree (MST) to explore the effect of weight assignment…
The quasicontinuum method is used to simulate three-dimensional Lomer-Cottrell junctions both in the absence and in the presence of an applied stress. The simulations show that this type of junction is destroyed by an unzipping mechanism in…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that the nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin is dramatically altered in the presence of a flexible cross-linker such as the abundant cytoskeletal protein filamin. The basic…
Statistical mechanics is an important tool for understanding polymer electroelasticity because the elasticity of polymers is primarily due to entropy. However, a common approach for the statistical mechanics of polymer chains, the Gaussian…