Paper Number
PO76 

Session
Poster Session

Title
Compression stiffening in synthetic composite hydrogels

Presentation Date and Time
October 12, 2022 (Wednesday) 6:30

Track / Room
Poster Session / Riverwalk A

Authors (Click on name to view author profile)

1. Song, Jake (MIT)
2. Yesilata, Serra (MIT)
3. Garcia, Marcelo (MIT)
4. McKinley, Gareth H. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering)

Author and Affiliation Lines (in printed abstract book)
Jake Song, Serra Yesilata, Marcelo Garcia and Gareth H. McKinley
MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139

Speaker / Presenter 
Song, Jake

Keywords
biomaterials; composite rheology; food rheology; gels; jammed systems

Text of Abstract
Mammalian tissues such as adipose, brain, and liver exhibit stiffening in their shear moduli with increasing compressive normal strain. Though this compression stiffening property has been associated with a composite structure consisting of fibrous polymers and volume-conserving fillers, a detailed understanding of the underlying mechanisms remains unexplored. Here, we explore this phenomenon by studying a wide array of composite hydrogel systems, and demonstrate practical strategies to design tissue-mimetic compression stiffening in soft materials for applications ranging from bioengineering to food science.