Shape Control, Morphing and Mechanobiology

Abstract

We review ideas emerged in the mechanics literature in the last fifty years concerning the problem of controlling shape. The central notion is the multiplicative decomposition of the gradient of the visible deformation into elastic and inelastic parts. We show that, when applied to analyze muscle contraction, this notion is useful to understand the different functions of a muscle as motor or brake, and the key difference in the way skeletal, soft, and cardiac muscles solve the push problem.