Poroviscoelasto-plasticity of agarose-based hydrogels

Abstract

Agarose gels are excellent candidates for tissue engineering as they are tunable, viscoelastic, and show a pronounced strain-stiffening response. These characteristics make them ideal to create in vitro environments to...

Nonlinear Viscoelasticity and Toughening Mechanisms in Nanoclay-PNIPAAm Double Network Hydrogels

“…The experimental data of Figure a implies that this rate is not constant but increases with stress. Motivated by recent work on the nonlinear viscoelasticity of agarose gels, we postulate that the bond exchange rate k d is bounded between two extremes: an equilibrium detachment rate k d 0 at low stress and an accelerated detachment rate k d ∞ when the stress exceeds a “yield” value σ y . The Ellis model provides an appropriate form for this relationship as k normald − k normald ∞ k normald 0 − k normald ∞ = 1 1 + ( σ / σ y ) n where n is an exponential factor related to the width of the transition regime (Figure c).…”