Related papers: Analytical model and experimental validation for n…
Modeling membrane interactions with arbitrarily shaped colloidal particles, such as environmental micro- and nanoplastics, at the cell scale remains particularly challenging, owing to the complexity of particle geometries and the need to…
This paper presents the analytic modeling of mobile heavy-duty manipulators with actively articulated suspension and its optimal control to maximize its static and dynamic stabilization. By adopting the screw theory formalism, we consider…
Developing a deep understanding of macroscopic mechanical properties of amorphous systems which lack structural periodicity, has posed a key challenge, not only at the level of theory but also in molecular simulations. Despite significant…
In the direct approach to continua in reduced space dimensions, a thin shell is described as a mathematical surface in three-dimensional space. An exploratory kinematic study of such surfaces could be very valuable, especially if conducted…
We study interactions between biological cells that apply anisotropic active mechanical forces on an elastic substrate. We model the cells as thin discs that along their perimeters apply radial, but angle-dependent forces on the substrate.…
In the perspective of developing smart hybrid materials with customized features, ferrogels and magnetorheological elastomers allow a synergy of elasticity and magnetism. The interplay between elastic and magnetic properties gives rise to a…
Discrete simulation methods are efficient tools to investigate the complex behaviors of complex fluids made of either dry granular materials or dilute suspensions. By contrast, materials made of soft and/or concentrated units (emulsions,…
A geometrically nonlinear sandwich beam model founded on the modified couple stress Timoshenko beam theory with K\'arm\'an kinematics is derived and employed in the analysis of periodic sandwich structures. The constitutive model is based…
Inspired by active shape morphing in developing tissues and biomaterials, we investigate two generic mechanochemical models where the deformations of a thin elastic sheet are driven by, and in turn affect, the concentration gradients of a…
In this work, we show that a recently proposed method for experimental nonlinear modal analysis based on the extended periodic motion concept is well suited to extract modal properties for strongly nonlinear systems (i.e. in the presence of…
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,…
We study the response of a model micro-electrochemical cell to a large ac voltage of frequency comparable to the inverse cell relaxation time. To bring out the basic physics, we consider the simplest possible model of a symmetric binary…
The mechanical response of cellular materials with spinodal topologies is numerically and experimentally investigated. Spinodal microstructures are generated by the numerical solution of the Cahn-Hilliard equation. Two different topologies…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
We consider a class of models for nonlinearly elastic surfaces in this work. We have in mind thin, highly deformable structures modeled directly as two-dimensional nonlinearly elastic continua, accounting for finite membrane and bending…
A number of current theories of plasticity in amorphous solids assume at their basis that plastic deformations are spatially localized. We present in this paper a series of numerical experiments to test the degree of locality of plastic…
The development of traction-force microscopy, in the past two decades, has created the unprecedented opportunity of performing direct mechanical measurements on living cells as they adhere or crawl on uniform or micro-patterned substrates.…
Precise modeling soft robots remains a challenge due to their infinite-dimensional nature governed by partial differential equations. This paper introduces an innovative approach for modeling soft pneumatic actuators, employing a nonlinear…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…