  We use molecular simulations to study jamming of a crumpled bead-spring model
polymer in a finite container and compare to jamming of repulsive spheres.
After proper constraint counting, the onset of rigidity is seen to occur
isostatically as in the case of repulsive spheres. Despite this commonality,
the presence of the curved container wall and polymer backbone bonds introduce
new mechanical properties. Notably, these include additional bands in the
vibrational density of states that reflect the material structure as well as
oscillations in local contact number and density near the wall but with lower
amplitude for polymers. Polymers have fewer boundary contacts, and this
low-density surface layer strongly reduces the global bulk modulus. We further
show that bulk-modulus dependence on backbone stiffness can be described by a
model of stiffnesses in series and discuss potential experimental and
biological applications.
