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A network of semiflexible biopolymers, known as the cytoskeleton, and molecular motors play fundamental mechanical roles in cellular activities. The cytoskeletal response to forces generated by molecular motors is profoundly linked to…
Disordered networks of semiflexible filaments are common support structures in biology. Familiar examples include fibrous matrices in blood clots, bacterial biofilms, and essential components of cells and tissues of plants, animals, and…
Bundles of polymer filaments are responsible for the rich and unique mechanical behaviors of many biomaterials, including cells and extracellular matrices. In fibrin biopolymers, whose nonlinear elastic properties are crucial for normal…
Composites of flexible and rigid polymers are ubiquitous in biology and industry alike, yet the physical principles determining their mechanical properties are far from understood. Here, we couple force spectroscopy with large-scale…
We present emergent mechanical memory storage behavior in soft cellular materials. The cellular materials are a network of soft hyperelastic rods which store shape changes, specifically local indentation. This happens under an applied…
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…
Living organisms can demonstrate highly adaptable and sophisticated responses using memory resulting from repeated exposure to external conditions or training. However, realizing similar adaptability in mechanical responses in inanimate,…
Packings of macroscopic granular chains capture some of the essential aspects of molecular polymer systems and have been suggested as a paradigm to understand the physics on a molecular scale. However, here we demonstrate that the…
The role of fixed degrees of freedom in soft/granular matter systems has broad applicability and theoretical interest. Here we address questions of the geometrical role that a scaffolding of fixed particles plays in tuning the threshold…
We perform experimental and numerical studies of a granular system under cyclic-compression to investigate reversibility and memory effects. We focus on the quasi-static forcing of dense systems, which is most relevant to a wide range of…
We have recently developed some simple continuum models of static granular media which display "fragile" behaviour: they predict that the medium is unable to support certain types of infinitesimal load (which we call "incompatible" loads)…
Granular jamming has been identified as a fundamental mechanism for the operation of robotic grippers. In this work, we show, that soft particles like expanded polystyrene beads lead to significantly larger gripping forces in comparison to…
Dynamic fragmentation simulations are essential for predicting material response at high strain rates, yet explicit dynamic simulations that combine an extrinsic cohesive-zone model (CZM) with penalty-based contact often exhibit severe…
Reconstituted filamentous actin networks with myosin motor proteins form active gels, in which motor proteins generate forces that drive the network far from equilibrium. This motor activity can also strongly affect the network elasticity;…
We investigate criticality near the jamming transition in both quiescent systems and those under shear by considering the effect of mechanical training on the jamming transition and nonlinear rheology. We simulate frictionless soft…
Numerous soft materials jam into an amorphous solid at high packing fraction. This non-equilibrium phase transition is best understood in the context of a model system in which particles repel elastically when they overlap. Recently,…
A multiscale (micro-to-macro) analysis is proposed for the prediction of the finite strain behavior of composites with hyperelastic constituents and embedded localized damage. The composites are assumed to possess periodic microstructure…
Active matter physics and swarm robotics have provided powerful tools for the study and control of ensembles driven by internal sources. At the macroscale, controlling swarms typically utilizes significant memory, processing power, and…
Jamming is a phenomenon shared by a wide variety of systems, such as granular materials, foams, and glasses in their high density regime. This has motivated the development of a theoretical framework capable of explaining many of their…
Both animal and plant tissue exhibit a nonlinear rheological phenomenon known as compression stiffening, or an increase in moduli with increasing uniaxial compressive strain. Does such a phenomenon exist in single cells, which are the…