Related papers: The strain-stiffening critical exponents in polyme…
Disordered fiber networks exhibit a floppy to rigid mechanical phase transition as a function of connectivity. Sub-isostatically connected networks can undergo this transition via straining. Critical exponents governing this transition have…
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…
Disordered elastic networks provide a framework for describing a wide variety of physical systems, ranging from amorphous solids, through polymeric fibrous materials to confluent cell tissues. In many cases, such networks feature two widely…
When subject to applied strain, fiber networks exhibit nonlinear elastic stiffening. Recent theory and experiements have shown that this phenomenon is controlled by an underlying mechanical phase transition that is critical in nature.…
Biopolymer networks are common in biological systems from the cytoskeleton of individual cells to collagen in the extracellular matrix. The mechanics of these systems under applied strain can be explained in some cases by a phase transition…
Disordered fibrous networks are ubiquitous in nature as major structural components of living cells and tissues. The mechanical stability of networks generally depends on the degree of connectivity: only when the average number of…
Networks of stiff fibers govern the elasticity of biological structures such as the extracellular matrix of collagen. These networks are known to stiffen nonlinearly under shear or extensional strain. Recently, it has been shown that such…
Hydrogels of semiflexible biopolymers such as collagen have been shown to contract axially under shear strain, in contrast to the axial dilation observed for most elastic materials. Recent work has shown that this behavior can be understood…
As a function of connectivity, spring networks exhibit a critical transition between floppy and rigid phases at an isostatic threshold. For connectivity below this threshold, fiber networks were recently shown theoretically to exhibit a…
Networks with only central force interactions are floppy when their average connectivity is below an isostatic threshold. Although such networks are mechanically unstable, they can become rigid when strained. It was recently shown that the…
Fibrous networks such as collagen are common in physiological systems. One important function of these networks is to provide mechanical stability for cells and tissues. At physiological levels of connectivity, such networks would be…
We study the mechanical stiffening behavior in two-dimensional (2D) cross-linked networks of semiflexible biopolymer filaments under simple shear. Filamental constituents immersed in a fluid undergo thermally excited bending motions.…
The mechanics of disordered fibrous networks such as those that make up the extracellular matrix are strongly dependent on the local connectivity or coordination number. For biopolymer networks this coordination number is typically between…
At zero temperature, spring networks with connectivity below Maxwell's isostatic threshold undergo a mechanical phase transition from a floppy state at small strains to a rigid state for applied shear strain above a critical strain…
Tissues commonly consist of cells embedded within a fibrous biopolymer network. Whereas cell-free reconstituted biopolymer networks typically soften under applied uniaxial compression, various tissues, including liver, brain, and fat, have…
The mechanical properties of biological materials are spatially heterogeneous. Typical tissues are made up of a spanning fibrous extracellular matrix in which various inclusions, such as living cells, are embedded. While the influence of…
We employ a mathematical model to analyze stress chains in thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) with a microphase-separated spherical structure composed of triblock copolymers. The model represents stress chains during uniaxial and biaxial…
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.…
Motivated by recent experiments showing that stiff biopolymer gels exhibit highly unusual negative normal elastic stresses, we develop a computational model for stiff polymer networks subject to large strains. In all cases, we find that…
We study the elasticity of fibrous materials composed of generalized stiff polymers. It is shown that in contrast to cellular foam-like structures affine strain fields are generically unstable. Instead, a subtle interplay between the…