Related papers: Elasticity of Polydomain Liquid Crystal Elastomers
We investigate how controlled foaming alters the mechanical dissipation of liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs). Using thermal expandable microspheres, we generate homogeneous foams with precisely tuned bubble volume fractions up to 13% and…
The polymer dynamics of homogeneous C$_{60}$-polystyrene mixtures in the molten state are studied via molecular simulations using two interconnected levels of representation for polystyrene nanocomposites: (a) A coarse-grained…
Monopole-like electrostatic interactions are ubiquitous in biology and condensed matter, but they are often screened by counter-ions and cannot be switched from attractive to repulsive. In colloidal science, where the prime goal is to…
Advances in high-precision dielectric spectroscopy has enabled access to non-linear susceptibilities of polar molecular liquids. The observed non-monotonic behavior has been claimed to provide strong support for theories of dynamic arrest…
Under appropriate conditions, mixtures of cationic and neutral lipids and DNA in water condense into complexes in which DNA strands form local 2D smectic lattices intercalated between lipid bilayer membranes in a lamellar stack. These…
The sliding columnar phase is a new liquid-crystalline phase of matter composed of two-dimensional smectic lattices stacked one on top of the other. This phase is characterized by strong orientational but weak positional correlations…
Expressions are obtained for force and couple densities and stress tensors in macroscopic models for nematic liquid crystals subjected to electric fields. The coupling between the liquid crystal orientational properties and the electric…
Control of physical behaviors of nematic colloids and colloidal crystals has been demonstrated by tuning particle shape, topology, chirality and surface charging. However, the capability of altering physical behaviors of such soft matter…
Motivated by results from an earlier Brownian Dynamics (BD) simulation for the collapse of a single, stiff polymer in a poor solvent [B. Schnurr, F. C. MacKintosh, and D. R. M. Williams, Europhys. Lett. 51 (3), 279 (2000)] we calculate the…
A slender thread of elastic hydrogel is susceptible to a surface instability that is reminiscent of the classical Rayleigh-Plateau instability of liquid jets. The final, highly nonlinear states that are observed in experiments arise from a…
A nematic liquid-crystal gel is a macroscopically homogeneous elastic medium with the rotational symmetry of a nematic liquid crystal. In this paper, we develop a general approach to the study of these gels that incorporates all underlying…
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 non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of semiflexible polymers confined to two dimensions are investigated by molecular dynamics simulations. Three different scenarios are considered: The force-extension relation of…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit both crystal-like and fluid-like features. In particular, the propagation of an acoustic wave shows an unexpected occurrence of some of the solid-like features at the hydrodynamic level, namely, the…
Uniaxial elastomers are characterized by five elastic constants. If their elastic modulus C_5 describing the energy of shear strains in planes containing the anisotropy axis vanishes, they are said to be soft. In spatial dimensions d less…
Amorphous elastomers exhibit significant rate-stiffening and unique viscous flow characteristics across a wide range of strain rates, often undergoing glass transition above a strain rate threshold. We have developed a…
Pull-in (or electro-mechanical) instability occurs when a drastic decrease in the thickness of a dielectric elastomer results in electrical breakdown, which limits the applications of dielectric devices. Here we derive the criteria for…
Lamellar or smectic phases often have an intricate intralamellar structure that remains scarcely understood from a microscopic viewpoint. In this work, we use molecular dynamics simulations to study the effect of volume exclusion and…
Loops undergoing thermal fluctuations are prevalent in nature. Ring-like or cross-linked polymers, cyclic macromolecules, and protein-mediated DNA loops all belong to this category. Stability of these molecules are generally described in…
A theory of mechanical behaviour of the magneto-sensitive elastomers is developed in the framework of a linear elasticity approach. Using a regular rectangular lattice model, different spatial distributions of magnetic particles within a…