Alignment and Nonlinear Elasticity in Biopolymer Gels

Abstract

We present a Landau type theory for the non-linear elasticity of biopolymer gels with a part of the order parameter describing induced nematic order of fibers in the gel. We attribute the non-linear elastic behavior of these materials to fiber alignment induced by strain. We suggest an application to contact guidance of cell motility in tissue. We compare our theory to simulation of a disordered lattice model for biopolymers. We treat homogeneous deformations such as simple shear, hydrostatic expansion, and simple extension, and obtain good agreement between theory and simulation. We also consider a localized perturbation which is a simple model for a contracting cell in a medium.

5 pages, 4 Figures

References in corpus (5)

• Strain-induced alignment in collagen gels
• Effective medium theory of semiflexible filamentous networks
• Nonlinear effective medium theory of disordered spring networks
• Scaling laws for the response of nonlinear elastic media with implications for cell mechanics
• Effective Medium Theory of Filamentous Triangular Lattice

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• Heterogeneous Force Chains in Cellularized Biopolymer Network
• Fiber networks below the isostatic point: fracture without stress concentration
• Deformation and fracture of echinoderm collagen networks
• Continuum elastic models for force transmissions in biopolymer gels
• In silico modeling of the rheological properties of covalently crosslinked collagen triple helices
• Nonlinear Poisson effect in affine semiflexible polymer networks
• Geometry-Driven Mechanical Memory in a Random Fibrous Matrix
• Elastic Anisotropy Governs the Decay of Cell-induced Displacements
• Network topology in soft gels: hardening and softening materials