Soft fibre networks
Felt, blood clots, skin and the skeleton of a cell are all networks of fibres, and their mechanics depends on how the fibres are connected. With L. Mahadevan at Harvard, we showed that a low-density network of filaments stiffens strongly when strained, and that its response depends on the density and the topology of the network (Kabla and Mahadevan, Journal of the Royal Society Interface 2007). Matthieu Wyart and colleagues showed how connectivity separates floppy networks from stiff ones (Wyart et al., Physical Review Letters 2008). In collagen gels, which are central to natural and engineered tissues, stretching makes the fibres align, and we developed the experiments and analysis tools to follow this (Vader et al., PLoS ONE 2009, with David Weitz). The same ideas apply to insect adhesive pads, whose internal fibres let the pad enlarge its contact area in a fraction of a second (Dirks et al., Acta Biomaterialia 2012, with Walter Federle).