Related papers: Unconventional elasticity in smectic-A elastomers
We present the general theory of Ising transitions in isotropic elastic media with vanishing thermal expansion. By constructing a minimal model with appropriate spin-lattice couplings, we show that in two dimensions near a continuous…
Modeling liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) at the molecular level is crucial for the predictable design of energy-conversion and stimuli-responsive materials. Here, we develop a self-consistent field theory for LCEs which captures the…
Two series of uniaxial tensile tests are performed on isotactic polypropylene with the strain rates ranging from 5 to 200 mm/min. In the first series, injection-molded specimens are used without thermal pre-treatment, whereas in the other…
We study the elastic properties of thermotropic smectic liquid crystals with focal conic domains (FCDs). After the application of the controlled preshear at different temperatures, we independently measured the shear modulus G' and the FCD…
Synchrotron Laue microdiffraction and Digital Image Correlation measurements were coupled to track the elastic strain field (or stress field) and the total strain field near a general grain boundary in a bent bicrystal. A 316L stainless…
We present detailed systematic studies of structural transformations in thin liquid crystal films with the smectic-C to hexatic phase transition. For the first time all possible structures reported in the literature are observed for one…
Dielectric elastomers have recently been proposed for various biologically-relevant applications, in which they may operate in fluidic environments where surface tension effects may have a significant effect on their stability and…
Observations are reported on isotactic polypropylene (i) in a series of tensile tests with a constant strain rate on specimens annealed for 24 h at various temperatures in the range from 110 to 150 C and (ii) in two series of creep tests in…
In many high temperature superconductors, small orthorhombic distortions of the lattice structure result in surprisingly large symmetry breaking of the electronic states and macroscopic properties, an effect often referred to as nematicity.…
We analyze the surface electroclinic effect (SECE) in a material that exhibits a first order bulk smectic-$A^*$ (Sm-$A^*$) -- smectic-$C^*$ (Sm-$C^*$) transition. The effect of a continuously varying degree of enantiomeric excess on the…
Motivated by the experimentally observed shear-induced destabilization and reorientation of smectic A like systems, we consider an extended formulation of smectic A hydrodynamics. We include both, the smectic layering (via the layer…
We study the elastic properties of a two-dimensional fluctuating surface whose area density is allowed to deviate from its optimal (Schulman) value. The behavior of such a surface is determined by an interplay between the area-dependent…
The strain-energy formulation of nonlinear elasticity can be extended to the case of significant compression by modulating suitable strain energy terms by a function of relative volume. For isotropic materials this can be accomplished by…
Young's modulus determines the mechanical loads required to elastically stretch a material, and also, the loads required to bend it, given that bending stretches one surface while compressing the opposite one. Flexoelectric materials have…
We report results of computer simulations of two-dimensional hard disks confined within a quasi one-dimensional ``hard-wall'' channel, a few atomic radii wide. Starting from a commensurate triangular solid a rescaling of the system size…
Hexagonal layered crystalline materials, such as graphene, boron nitride, tungsten sulfate, and so on, have attracted enormous attentions, due to their unique combination of atomistic structures and superior thermal, mechanical, and…
Wrinkles commonly develop in a thin film deposited on a soft elastomer substrate when the film is subject to compression. Motivated by recent experiments [Agrawal et al., Soft Matter 8, 7138 (2012)] that show how wrinkle morphology can be…
The short-range order which remains when the isotropic to smectic-A transition is perturbed by a gel of silica nanoparticles (aerosils) has been studied using high-resolution synchrotron x-ray diffraction. The gels have been created…
We investigate the effects of layered quenched disorder on the behavior of planar magnets, superfluids, and superconductors by performing large-scale Monte-Carlo simulations of a three-dimensional randomly layered XY model. Our data provide…
We present experimental measurements of the cholesteric-smectic phase transition of suspensions of charged semiflexible rods as a function of rod flexibility and surface charge. The rod particles consist of the bacteriophage M13 and closely…