Table 3.

Fiber stiffness amplification and interaction as a function of surrounding PAM gel stiffness. PAM gel stiffness is the first column is a group label with “target” stiffness, actual stiffness of the impregnating environment is listed in Table 1. A substantial increase in apparent fiber stiffness was observed with the impregnation of stiffer PAM gel surrounding the fibers. A stiffer surrounding environment also promotes higher magnitude interactions in between fibers.

PAM shear modulus μ_m (kPa)	n	fiber stiffness amplification χ(μ_m) (fold increase)	fiber-fiber interaction η_int (μ_m) (kPa)
0.0	4	4.4464 ± 0.6258	7,380.929 ± 20.847
3.8	4	3.1138 ± 0.3442	4,840.594 ± 954.413
8.0	5	3.8214 ± 1.1133	6,272.003 ± 2,586.152
12.0	5	5.6812 ± 0.8528	10,267.599 ± 2,021.273
19.0	3	6.4451 ± 0.5180	10,182.950 ± 1,180.192
24.0	3	13.2459 ± 1.7264	21,514.210 ± 3,289.930
42.0	3	14.5941 ± 2.9029	24,549.547 ± 3,545.079
48.0	3	20.7062 ± 1.3833	42,399.357 ± 3,439.207

		χ(μ_m) = 3.4902 e^0.0374μ_m	η_int (μ_m) = 5559.7 e^0.0405μ_m
		R² = 0.88587	R² = 0.88734