Related papers: Effect of Poisson ratio on cellular structure form…
Describing and measuring the elastic properties of cellular materials such as honeycombs and foams can be a difficult problem when the cell structure is disordered. This paper suggests that tracking the flow of forces through the material…
The effect of self-affine roughness on solid contact is examined with molecular dynamics and continuum calculations. The contact area and normal and lateral stiffnesses rise linearly with the applied load, and the load rises exponentially…
We study the elastic response of composites of rods embedded in elastic media. We calculate the micro-mechanical response functions, and bulk elastic constants as functions of rod density. We find two fixed points for Poisson's ratio with…
We propose a model for the elastic properties of RNA gels. The model predicts anomalous elastic properties in the form of a negative Poisson ratio and shape instabilities. The anomalous elasticity is generated by the non-Gaussian…
Poisson ratio is an important mechanical property that reveals the deformation patterns of materials. A positive Poisson ratio is a feature of the majority of materials. Some materials, however, display auxetic behaviors (i.e. possess…
Living tissues experience various external forces on cells, influencing their behaviour, physiology, shape, gene expression, and destiny through interactions with their environment. Despite much research done in this area, challenges remain…
We present first-principles calculations of elastic properties of multilayered two-dimensional crystals such as graphene, h-BN and 2H-MoS2 which shows that their Poisson's ratios along out-of-plane direction are negative, near zero and…
In glass, starting from a dependence of the Angell's fragility on the Poisson ratio [V. N. Novikov and A. P. Sokolov, Nature 431, 961 (2004)], and a dependence of the Poisson ratio on the atomic packing density [G. N. Greaves et al., Nat.…
One of the most unique physical features of cell adhesion to external surfaces is the active generation of mechanical force at the cell-material interface. This includes pulling forces generated by contractile polymer bundles and networks,…
Tuning of active prestress e.g. through activity of molecular motors constitutes a powerful cellular tool to adjust cellular stiffness through nonlinear material properties. Understanding this tool is an important prerequisite for our…
Under extensional strain, fiber networks can exhibit an anomalously large and nonlinear Poisson effect accompanied by a dramatic transverse contraction and volume reduction for applied strains as small as a few percent. We demonstrate that…
The size and shape of a large variety of polymeric particles, including biological cells, star polymers, dendrimes, and microgels, depend on the applied stresses as the particles are extremely soft. In high-density suspensions these…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
Animal cells are active, contractile objects. While bioassays address the molecular characterization of cell contractility, the mechanical characterization of the active forces in cells remains challenging. Here by confronting theoretical…
The alignment of fibers and cells in living tissues affect their mechanical properties and functionality. In this context, one can draw an analogy between tissues and nematic liquid crystal elastomers. We explore this analogy by growing…
Living cells are soft bodies of a characteristic form, but endowed with a capacity for a steady turnover of their structures. Both of these material properties, i.e. recovery of the shape after an external stress has been imposed and…
The mechanical environment of a substrate plays a key role in influencing the behavior of adherent biological cells. Traditional tunable substrates have limitations as their mechanical properties cannot be dynamically altered in-situ during…
Elastic properties of soft, three-dimensional dimers, interacting through site-site n-inverse-power potential, are determined by computer simulations at zero temperature. The degenerate crystal of dimers exhibiting (Gaussian) size…
Cell division and death can be regulated by the mechanical forces within a tissue. We study the consequences for the stability and roughness of a propagating interface, by analysing a model of mechanically-regulated tissue growth in the…
The evolution of various competing cell types in tissues, and the resulting persistent tissue population, is studied numerically and analytically in a particle-based model of active tissues. Mutations change the properties of cells in…