Abstract:
This work is motivated by the abundance of biological, fiber-like structures on the nano- and microscale (e.g. biopolymer filaments) and their dominant role in biophysics and medicine. It develops conceptually new models and methods for molecular interactions of deformable fibers such as van der Waals adhesion, electrostatic effects, and steric repulsion. These highly efficient approaches enable the simulation-based investigation of so far intractable problems in complex biophyiscal systems.