Related papers: Nonlinear Elasticity in Biological Gels
The shape of biological shells, such as cell nuclei, membranes, and vesicles, often deviates from a perfect sphere due to an interplay of complex interactions with a myriad of molecular structures. In particular, semiflexible biopolymers…
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…
Soft living tissues like cartilage can be considered as biphasic materials comprised of a fibrous complex biopolymer network and a viscous background liquid. Here, we show by a combination of experiment and theoretical analysis that both…
In recent years molecular elasticity has emerged as an active area of research: there are experiments that probe mechanical properties of single biomolecules such as DNA and Actin, with a view to understanding the role of elasticity of…
Strain in granular materials in quasistatic conditions under varying stress originate in (I) contact deformation and (II) rearrangements of the contact network. Depending on sample history and applied load, either mechanism might dominate.…
Soft composite solids, comprising discrete inclusions embedded within a compliant matrix, are emerging candidates for engineering synthetic tissues and soft robotic materials. Current strategies for controlling their nonlinear mechanics,…
We present a study on swelling-induced circumferential buckling of tubular shaped gels. Inhomogeneous stress develops as gel swells under mechanical constraints, which gives rise to spontaneous buckling instability without external force.…
Woven shell structures are beneficial for applications requiring lightweight, damage resilience, and design tunability, such as in wearable devices, soft robotics, and aerospace systems. A fundamental component of woven structures is the…
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…
Prestrained elastic networks arise in a number of biological and technological systems ranging from the cytoskeleton of cells to tensegrity structures. To understand the response of such a network as a function of the prestrain, we consider…
We derive geometrically linearized theories for incompressible materials from nonlinear elasticity theory in the small displacement regime. Our nonlinear stored energy densities may vary on the same (small) length scale as the typical…
We constrast the dynamics in model unentangled polymer melts of chains of three different stiffnesses: flexible, intermediate, and rodlike. Flexible and rodlike chains, which readily solidify into close-packed crystals (respectively with…
Extra-large deformations in ultra-soft elastic materials are ubiquitous, yet systematic studies and methods to understand the mechanics of such huge strains are lacking. Here we investigate this complex problem systematically with a simple…
We review continuum elastic models for the transmission of both external forces and internal active cellular forces in biopolymer gels, and relate them to recent experiments. Rather than being exhaustive, we focus on continuum elastic…
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…
We derive the constitutive equations of an active polar gel from a model for the dynamics of elastic molecules that link polar elements. Molecular binding kinetics induces the fluidization of the material, giving rise to Maxwell…
Continuum models of active nematic gels have proved successful to describe a number of biological systems consisting of a population of rodlike motile subunits in a fluid environment. However, in order to get a thorough understanding of the…
Heteropolymers are ubiquitous in both synthetic systems, such as block copolymers, and biological macromolecules, including proteins and nucleic acids. Beyond their chemical composition, these polymers often exhibit spatial variations in…
Bone is a stiff and though, hierarchical and continuously evolving material that optimizes its structure to respond to mechanical stimuli, which also govern growth and remodeling processes. However, a full understanding of the underlying…
Biological membranes mainly consist of lipids and proteins. While the proteins have many functions as single molecules, the membrane as a whole displays physical properties that cannot be explained on the single molecule level. For example,…