Related papers: Rethinking failure in polymer networks: a probabil…

From understanding the sand on the beach to the foam on your beer, soft sphere simulations have been crucial to the study of the amorphous world around us. However, many of the materials we interact with on a daily basis aren't comprised of…

Particular aspects of problems ranging from dielectric breakdown to metal insu- lator transition can be studied using electrical o elastic networks. We present an expression for the mean breakdown strength of such networks.First, we intro-…

Tire wear releases millions of tons of particles annually, bearing immense industrial and environmental impact. However, efforts to mitigate the wear of elastomeric materials remain largely empirical, due to a limited understanding of the…

The problem of diffusive bond-dissociation in a double well potential under application of an external force is scrutinized. We compute the probability distribution of rupture forces and present a detailed discussion of the influence of…

Using molecular dynamics simulations we examine the dynamics of a family of model polymers with varying chain length and torsional potential barriers. We focus on features of the dynamics of polymers that are seen experimentally but absent…

The fiber bundle model describes a collection of elastic fibers under load. the fibers fail successively and for each failure, the load distribution among the surviving fibers change. Even though very simple, the model captures the…

Double network hydrogels show remarkable mechanical performance, combining high strength and fracture toughness with sufficient stiffness to bear load, despite containing only a low density of cross-linked polymer molecules in water. We…

Recent developments of microscopic mechanical experiments allow the manipulation of individual polymer molecules in two main ways: \textit{uniform} stretching by external forces and \textit{non-uniform} stretching by external fields. Many…

By phantom chain simulations, it has been recently discovered that the fracture characteristics of star polymer networks with different node functionality and conversion ratios can be described by the cycle rank of the networks [Masubuchi…

Molecular dynamics simulation of a generic polymer model is applied to study melts of polymers with different types of intrinsic stiffness. Important static observables of the single chain such as gyration radius or persistence length are…

We make use of the previously developed formalism for a monomer ensemble and include angular dependence of the segments of the polymer chains thus described. In particular we show how to deal with stiffness when the polymer chain is…

We review the physical properties of macromolecular networks, consisting of semiflexible polymers such as actin. We start by giving a theoretical analysis of the conformational statistics and mechanical response of single filaments.…

We study the elastic deformations in a cross-linked polymer network film triggered by the binding of submicron particles with a sticky surface, mimicking the interactions of viral pathogens with thin films of stimulus-responsive polymeric…

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 equilibrium partitioning of linear polymer chains into flexible polymer networks is governed by intricate entropic constraints arising from configurational degrees of freedom of both chains and network, yet a quantitative understanding…

The mechanical properties of a polymeric network containing both crosslinks and sliplinks (entanglements) are studied using a multi-chain Brownian dynamics simulation. We coarse-grain at the level of chain segments connecting consecutive…

We combine molecular dynamics simulations of deformations at the submicron scale with a continuum fracture mechanics calculation for the onset of crack propagation to predict the macroscopic fracture toughness of amorphous glassy polymers.…

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…

This paper is concerned with the energy decomposition of various nonlocal models, including elasticity, thin plates, and gradient elasticity, to arrive at bond-based nonlocal models in which the bond force depends only on the deformation of…

Solutions of polymer chains are modelled using non-equilibrium Brownian dynamics simulations, with physically associative beads which form reversible crosslinks to establish a system-spanning physical gel network. Rheological properties…