Related papers: Elasticity of Polydomain Liquid Crystal Elastomers
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…
Predicting the macroscopic mechanical behavior of polymeric materials from the micro-structural features has remained a challenge for decades. Existing theoretical models often fail to accurately capture the experimental data, due to…
Inspired by recent experiments, we present a phase-field model of microphase separation in an elastomer swollen with a solvent. The imbalance between the molecular scale of demixing and the mesoscopic scale beyond which elasticity operates…
The paper develops a continuum theory of weak viscoelastic nematodynamics of Maxwell type. It may describe the molecular elasticity effects in mono-domain flows of liquid crystalline polymers as well as the viscoelastic effects in…
We use lattice-Boltzmann molecular dynamics (LBMD) simulations to study the compression of a confined polymer immersed in a fluid and pushed by a large spherical colloid with a diameter comparable to the channel width. We examined the…
We perform thorough molecular-dynamics simulations to compare elasticity and yielding of atomic crystals and model semicrystalline polymers, the latter characterized by very similar positional ordering with respect to atomic crystals and…
This paper presents the derivation of the homogenized equations that describe the macroscopic mechanical response of elastomers filled with liquid inclusions in the setting of small quasistatic deformations. The derivation is carried out…
Stability is an important and fruitful avenue of research for liquid crystal elastomers. At constant temperature, upon stretching, the homogeneous state of a nematic body becomes unstable, and alternating shear stripes develop at very low…
Solitons in liquid crystals are spatially localised stable configuration of the liquid crystal orientational order parameter that exhibit emergent particle-like properties such as mutual interaction, translational motion and reconfigurable…
Self-healing polymers crosslinked by solely reversible bonds are intrinsically weaker than common covalently crosslinked networks. Introducing covalent crosslinks into a reversible network would improve mechanical strength. It is…
We analyze structural and conformational properties in a simulated bead-spring model of a non-entangled, supercooled polymer melt. We explore the statics of the model via various structure factors, involving not only the monomers, but also…
Polymeric materials that couple deformation and electrostatics have the potential for use in soft sensors and actuators with potential applications ranging from robotic, biomedical, energy, aerospace and automotive technologies. In contrast…
The first part of this paper develops a theory for the free energy of lyotropic polymer nematic liquid crystals. We use a continuum model with macroscopic elastic moduli for a polymer nematic phase. By evaluating the partition function,…
Conformations of a single semiflexible polymer chain dissolved in a low molecular weight liquid crystalline solvents (nematogens) are examined by using a mean field theory. We takes into account a stiffness and partial orientational…
A constitutive model is developed for the mechanical response of elastomers at finite strains. A polymer is treated as a network of linear chains linked by permanent (chemical crosslinks) and temporary (entanglements and van der Waals…
Investigating thermodynamic properties of liquid-solid transitions of flexible homopolymers with elastic bonds by means of multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations, we find crystalline conformations that resemble ground-state structures of…
Constitutive equations are derived for the time-dependent behavior of particle-reinforced elastomers at isothermal loading with finite strains. A rubbery polymer is modelled as a network of macromolecules bridged by junctions which can slip…
Constitutive equations are derived for the viscoelastoplastic response of amorphous glassy polymers at isothermal loading with small strains. A polymer is treated as an ensemble of cooperatively relaxing regions (CRR) which rearrange at…
We present a detailed analysis of the molecular packing of a strained liquid crystal elastomer composed of chiral mesogens in the smectic A phase. X-ray diffraction patterns of the elastomer collected over a range of orientations with…
The conformation of polyelectrolytes in the solution state has long been of interest in polymer science. Herein we utilize all atom molecular dynamics simulations (MD) and small-angle x-ray scattering experiments (SAXS) to elucidate the…