Related papers: Thermal diffusion and bending kinetics in nematic …
We model within the framework of finite elasticity two inherent instabilities observed in liquid crystal elastomers under uniaxial tension. First is necking which occurs when a material sample suddenly elongates more in a small region where…
We investigate properties of turbulence and turbulent transport of non-inertial particles described in terms of turbulent thermal diffusion in strongly inhomogeneous and anisotropic convection forced by two similar turbulence generators…
An analysis of the IR absorbance for the segmented functional groups of liquid crystal dimers: mesogen and linker, enabled the orientation order to be determined and information about the dipole interactions in the nematic and twist-bend…
Very thin elastic sheets, even at zero temperature, exhibit nonlinear elastic response by virtue of their dominant bending modes. Their behavior is even richer at finite temperature. Here we use molecular dynamics (MD) to study the…
We study the finite-temperature dynamics of thin elastic sheets in a single-clamped cantilever configuration. This system is known to exhibit a tilt transition at which the preferred mean plane of the sheet shifts from horizontal to a plane…
We investigate experimentally phenomenon of turbulent thermal diffusion of micron-size solid particles in an inhomogeneous convective turbulence forced by one vertically-oriented oscillating grid in an air flow. This effect causes formation…
Nematic solids respond strongly to changes in ambient heat or light, significantly differently parallel and perpendicular to the director. This phenomenon is well characterized for uniform director fields, but not for defect textures. We…
A rectangular plate of dielectric elastomer exhibiting gradients of material properties through its thickness will deform inhomogeneously when a potential difference is applied to compliant electrodes on its major surfaces, because each…
Liquid Crystalline Elastomers (LCEs) are active materials that are of interest due to their programmable response to various external stimuli such as light and heat. When exposed to these stimuli, the anisotropy in the response of the…
Most, but not all, liquid crystals tend to align when subject to shear flow, while most nematic polymeric liquid crystals undergo a tumbling instability, where the director rotate with the flow. The reasons of this instability remain…
We study the linear dynamic mechanical response of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline elastomers under shear in the geometry that allows the director rotation. The aspects of time-temperature superposition are discussed at some length…
We use a fluctuating hydrodynamic approach to calculate the orientation fluctuations correlation functions of a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal in a nonequilibrium state induced by a stationay heat flux. Since in this nonequilibrium…
We propose a lattice statistical model to investigate the phase diagrams and the soft responses of nematic liquid-crystal elastomers. Using suitably scaled infinite-range interactions, we obtain exact self-consistent equations for the…
In this paper, we speculate on a possible application of Liquid Crystal Elastomers to the field of soft robotics. In particular, we study a concept for limbless locomotion that is amenable to miniaturisation. For this purpose, we formulate…
The mechanical properties of thermally excited two-dimensional crystalline membranes can depend dramatically on their geometry and topology. A particularly relevant example is the effect on the crumpling transition of holes in the membrane.…
The nonlinear elastic properties of nematic liquid crystals have acquired new interest with the recent experimental observation of bulk modulated nematic phases which are composed by achiral molecules. We extend the Oseen-Zocher-Frank's…
In most systems, thermal diffusion is intrinsically slow with respect to mechanical relaxation. We devise here a generic approach to accelerate the relaxation of the temperature field of a 1D object, in order to beat the mechanical time…
We studied experimentally the effect of turbulent thermal diffusion in a multi-fan turbulence generator which produces a nearly homogeneous and isotropic flow with a small mean velocity. Using Particle Image Velocimetry and Image Processing…
When liquid-crystalline elastomers pass through the isotropic-nematic transition, the orientational order parameter and the elastic strain vary rapidly but smoothly, without the expected first-order discontinuity. This broadening of the…
Atomic force microscopy cantilevers are often, intentionally or not, heated at their extremity. We describe a model to compute the resulting temperature field in the cantilever and in the surrounding fluid on a wide temperature range. In…