Abstract

Acknowledging the elastic properties of bio - based biomaterials would aid in the design of artificial hydrogels and nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems, both of which are widely used in biomedicine. We present a mechanistically motivated constitutive model to explain the structural evolution of biopolymer hydrogels. A free energy function is developed that incorporates the configurational entropy of biopolymer nanofibers, the potential energy of physical crosslinks, and the mixing energy of water molecules.