Simulation of soft bacteria contact to be applied in nanomanipulation

In this paper we developed and modeled elastic - plastic contact theories for soft spherical nano - bacteria to be applied in manipulation of various micro/nanobio particles based on atomic force microscopy. First, we simulated elastic contact for three types of nano - bacteria: S. epidermidis, S. salivarius and S. aureus, using Hertz contact model and finite element. Comparing simulation results of elastic contact with experimental data showed that considering elastic contact for simulating the contact of nano - bio particles is not appropriate and will yield incorrect results. Therefore, in this research, we tried to develop and simulate Chang elastic - plastic contact theory to be applied in simulation of contact mechanics for application in simulating manipulation. Comparing simulation of Chang contact theory with available experimental data and the results from contact simulation of Chen et al showed that Chang’s complete elastic - plastic theory yields desirable results. Comparing the diagram of contact radius in terms of indentation in Hertz and Chang theories showed that the created contact radius in elastic - plastic state is larger than contact radius in elastic state.