Self-assembly and nonlinear rheology of crosslinked semiflexible polymer networks

Self-assembled semiflexible polymer networks are ubiquitous in nature and form the mechanical backbone of nearly all biological materials. These vary tremendously in scale, organization, and mechanical response, providing the broad spectrum of material properties seen across the living world. Simulations offer a convenient and powerful method for exploring how the details of component concentrations and the network preparation process give rise to macroscopic structures with various emergent mechanical responses. The project required the utilization of the open-source package LAMMPS to simulate the formation of semiflexible polymer networks from simplified components (polymers and crosslinkers) with varying filament protein and crosslinker concentrations. To relate these parameters to the mechanical response of the resulting networks, a coarse-grained representation of filaments and linkers was considered.