Monday, 20 December, 2010

Muscle filaments make mechanical strain visible

New model system for examining plastics properties

 

An actin network observed through the confocal rheometer

Plastics-based materials have been in use for decades. But manufacturers are facing a serious hurdle in their quest for new developments: Substantial influences of the microscopic material structure on mechanical material properties cannot be observed directly. The synthetic polymer molecules are simply too small for microscopic observation in mechanical experiments. A team of physicists led by professor Andreas Bausch of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) has now developed a method that allows just these kinds of measurements. They present their results in Nature Communications. (Source: TUM Press release, 20.12.2010)

Presseinformation der TUM (deutsch)
Press information TUM (english)
Publication "Cyclic hardening in bundled actin networks"