Related papers: Mechanical switching of ferro-electric rubber
We present experiments and simulations on cyclically sheared colloidal gels, and probe their behaviour on several different length scales. The shearing induces structural changes in the experimental gel, changing particles' neighborhoods…
A Landau theory is constructed for the vulcanization transition in cross-linked polymer systems with spontaneous nematic ordering. The neo-classical theory of the elasticity of nematic elastomers is derived via the minimization of this…
The effects of thermal elastic fluctuations in rubber materials are examined. It is shown that, due to an interplay with the incompressibility constraint, these fluctuations qualitatively modify the large-deformation stress-strain relation,…
Filler-polymer interactions are one of the keys to understanding the physical properties of polymer composites. These interactions give rise to an interface with specific properties that may have a nontrivial effect on the macroscopic…
Quasi-static strain-controlled measurements of stress vs strain curves in macroscopic amorphous solids result in a nonlinear looking curve that ends up either in mechanical collapse or in a steady-state with fluctuations around a mean…
Liquid crystal elastomers are rubbers with liquid crystal order. They contract along their nematic director when heated or illuminated. The shape changes are large and occur in a relatively narrow temperature interval, or at low…
Fractal patterns are observed in computational mechanics of elastic-plastic transitions in two models of linear elastic/perfectly-plastic random heterogeneous materials: (1) a composite made of locally isotropic grains with weak random…
We investigate the connection between the transport properties and the thermodynamics of electronic systems with a tendency to form broken-symmetry mesophases evocative of the physics of liquid crystals. Through a hydrodynamic approach to…
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…
The shear response of soft solids can be modeled with linear elasticity, provided the forcing is slow and weak. Both of these approximations must break down when the material loses rigidity, such as in foams and emulsions at their…
We introduce a nonlinear, one-dimensional bending-twisting model for an inextensible bi-rod that is composed of a nematic liquid crystal elastomer. The model combines an elastic energy that is quadratic in curvature and torsion with a…
A two dimensional amorphous material is modeled as an assembly of mesoscopic elemental pieces coupled together to form an elastically coherent structure. Plasticity is introduced as the existence of different minima in the energy landscape…
Structural studies by synchrotron x-ray diffraction on two main-chain smectic-C elastomers reveal the presence of two different relaxation mechanisms in these systems at low and high strains. At low strains, the smectic layers are…
Atomistic deformation simulations in the nominally elastic regime are performed for a model binary glass with strain rates as low as $10^{4}$/sec (corresponding to 0.01 shear strain per 1$\mu$sec). A robust elasticity is revealed that…
Elastic strain has the potential for a controlled manipulation of the band gap and spin-polarized Dirac states of topological materials, which can lead to pseudo-magnetic-field effects, helical flat bands and topological phase transitions.…
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…
Spatial heterogeneity in the elastic properties of soft random solids is investigated via a two-pronged approach. First, a nonlocal phenomenological model for the elastic free energy is examined. This features a quenched random kernel,…
A propagating "beam" triggering a local phase transition in a nematic elastomer sets it into a crawling motion, which may morph due to buckling. We consider the motion of the various configurations of slender rods and thin stripes with both…
Elongated colloidal rods at sufficient packing conditions are known to form stable lamellar or smectic phases. Using a simplified volume-exclusion model, we propose a generic equation-of-state for hard-rod smectics that is robust against…
Finite Element simulations of rubbers and biological soft tissue usually assume that the material being deformed is slightly compressible. It is shown here that in shearing deformations the corresponding normal stress distribution can…