Simple micromechanical model of protein crystals for their mechanical characterizations

Proteins have been known to perform the excellent mechanical functions and exhibit the remarkable mechanical properties such as high fracture toughness in spider silk protein [1]. This indicates that the mechanical characterization of protein molecules and/or crystals is very essential to understand such remarkable mechanical function of protein molecules. In this study, for gaining insight into mechanical behavior of protein crystals, we developed the micromechanical model by using the empirical potential field prescribed to alpha carbon atoms of a protein crystal in a unit cell. We consider the simple protein crystals for their mechanical behavior under tensile loading to be compared with full atomic models