Work

Buckling by disordered growth

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Buckling instabilities driven by tissue growth underpin key developmental events such as the folding of the brain. Tissue growth is disordered due to cell-to-cell variability, but the effects of this variability on buckling are unknown. Here, we analyze what is perhaps the simplest setup of this problem: the buckling of an elastic rod with fixed ends driven by spatially varying, yet highly symmetric growth. Combining analytical calculations for simple growth fields and numerical sampling of random growth fields, we show that variability can increase as well as decrease the growth threshold for buckling, even when growth variability does not cause any residual stresses. For random growth, we find numerically that the shift of the buckling threshold correlates with spatial moments of the growth field. Our results imply that biological systems can either trigger or avoid buckling by exploiting the spatial arrangement of growth variability.

Source: Physical review. E

DOI: 10.1103/physreve.110.054405

Authors: Rahul G. Ramachandran, Ricard Alert, Pierre A. Haas

Institutions: Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Center for Systems Biology Dresden, Technische Universität Dresden, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics

Language: English

Topic: Advanced Materials and Mechanics

Subfield: Mechanical Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: European Research Council

Award: G1727924924