Related papers: Smectic-$A$ elastomers with weak director anchorin…
Two dimensional simulations of non-cohesive granular matter in a biaxial shear tester are discussed. The effect of particle elasticity on the mechanical behavior is investigated using two complementary distinct element methods (DEM): Soft…
Advent of nematic liquid crystals flows have attracted renewed attention in view of microfluidic transport phenomena. Among various transport processes, electroosmosis stands as one of the efficient flow actuation method through narrow…
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…
We report the results of Monte Carlo simulations of the Lebwohl--Lasher model of nematic liquid crystals confined to cylindrical cavities with homeotropic anchoring. We show that the ratio of the bulk to surface couplings is not in general…
Recent experiments have reported a novel splay nematic phase, which has alternating domains of positive and negative splay. To model this phase, previous studies have considered a 1D splay modulation of the director field, accompanied by a…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) marry the large deformation response of a cross-linked polymer network with the nematic order of liquid crystals pendent to the network. Of particular interest is the actuation of LCE sheets where the…
By minimizing a thermodynamic-like potential, we unbiasedly sample the potential energy landscape of soft and frictionless spheres under constant shear stress. We obtain zero-temperature jammed states under desired shear stresses and…
Control of frictional interactions among liquid-suspended particles has led to tunable, strikingly non-Newtonian rheology via the formation of strong flow constraints as particles come into close proximity under shear. Typically, these…
We consider a one-dimensional variational problem arising in connection with a model for cholesteric liquid crystals. The principal feature of our study is the assumption that the twist deformation of the nematic director incurs much higher…
The ground state of twist-bend nematic liquid crystals is a heliconical molecular arrangement in which the nematic director precesses uniformly about an axis, making a fixed angle with it. Both precession senses are allowed in the ground…
The capillary forces exerted by liquid drops and bubbles on a soft solid are directly measured using molecular dynamics simulations. The force on the solid by the liquid near the contact line is not oriented along the liquid vapor interface…
The mechanical responses of dense packings of soft athermal spheres under a finite-rate shear are studied by means of molecular dynamics simulations. We investigate the volume fraction and shear rate dependence of the fluctuations in the…
In infinite dimension, many-body systems of pairwise interacting particles provide exact analytical benchmarks for features of amorphous materials, such as the stress-strain curve of glasses under quasistatic shear. Here, instead of a…
Two equal and opposite distributed dead loads are applied orthogonally to the axis of an elastic rod in its rectilinear reference configuration, one at the extrados and the other at the intrados, such that the resultant applied force per…
The director configuration of disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals in the presence of an external magnetic field is evaluated. Our method is a combination of a polynomial expansion for the director and of further analytical…
We analyse the effect of thermal fluctuations on the elastic constants of the decoupled lamellar phase of tethered, crystalline membranes. Using a momentum-shell renormalization group technique, we show that the smectic-A -like…
One of the major theoretical riddles in shear banding instabilities is the angle that the shear band chooses spontaneously with respect to the principal stress axis. Here we employ our recent atomistic theory to compute analytically the…
The equations of a planar elastica under pressure can be rewritten in a useful form by parametrising the variables in terms of the local orientation angle, $\theta$, instead of the arc length. This ``$\theta$-formulation'' lends itself to a…
There have been some interesting recent advances in understanding the notion of mechanical disorder in structural glasses and the statistical mechanics of these systems' low-energy excitations. Here we contribute to these advances by…
The structure, thermodynamics and slow activated dynamics of the equilibrated metastable regime of glass-forming fluids remains a poorly understood problem of high theoretical and experimental interest. We apply a highly accurate…