  Prestrained elastic networks arise in a number of biological and
technological systems ranging from the cytoskeleton of cells to tensegrity
structures. To understand the response of such a network as a function of the
prestrain, we consider a minimal model in one dimension. We do this by
considering a chain (1D network) of elastic springs upon which a random, zero
mean, finite variance prestrain is imposed. Numerical simulations and
analytical predictions quantify the magnitude of the contraction as a function
of the variance of the prestrain, and show that the chain always shrinks. To
test these predictions, we vary the topology of the chain and consider more
complex connectivity and show that our results are relatively robust to these
changes.
