ARUP; ISBN: 978-0-9562121-5-3 - CMBBE 2012 - Cardiff University

untangled, the local fiber displacements and von Mises stresses decrease substantially.
a. Gel with 25 entangled b. Gel with Fiber 1 c. Gel with Fiber 10
collagen fibers shifted out-of plane shifted out-of-plane
Fig 5. Fiber displacements and stresses. The von Mises equivalent stresses are plotted
on deformed fibers (deformations scaled by a factor of 3) with original fiber location
also shown in this close-up view showing fibers close to the fixed cell. Color scale for
all plots is 0 -- 6x10 5 Pa.
As an analogue for the force transmission along the axis between the cells, the xcomponent
of the stress tensor was evaluated on the right-most portion of the fixed
cell’s boundary as shown in Fig. 6.
a. 25 entangled fibers b. Fiber 10 untangled
Fig 6. Boundary stress on a portion of fixed cell; x-component of the stress tensor (color
scale is -20 -- 35 Pa for both plots).
Table 2 summarizes the x-component of the stress tensor from all cases studied. These
data clearly show that stress transmission over long distances is maximized in the
models that include a tangled fiber network, can be much lower in networks with
(selected) untangled fibers, and insignificant when assuming homogeneous properties.