Effect of poisson ratio on cellular structure formation

I. B. Bischofs and U. S. Schwarz

Phys. Rev. Lett. 95: 068102 (2005)

Mechanically active cells in soft media act as force dipoles. The
resulting elastic interactions are long ranged and favor the formation
of strings. We show analytically that due to screening, the effective
interaction between strings decays exponentially, with a decay length
determined only by geometry. Both for disordered and ordered
arrangements of cells, we predict novel phase transitions from
paraelastic to ferroelastic and antiferroelastic phases as a function
of the Poisson ratio.