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Recent experiments have exploited elastic instabilities in membranes to create complex patterns. However, the rational design of such structures poses many challenges, as they are products of nonlinear elastic behavior. We pose a simple…
It is well known that an annular sheet could wrinkle as a result of axisymmetric tensile loads applied at the edges. In this system, regions under compression appear due to Poisson effect in the azimuthal direction yielding an incompatible…
Polymers with active segments constitute prospective future materials and are used as a model for some biological systems such as chromatin. The directions of the active forces are typically introduced with temporal or spatial correlations…
We investigate the optical properties of an ultrathin film of a topological insulator in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field. We show that due to the combination of the overlap between the surface states of the two layers and the…
Motivated by recent experiments showing nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin cross-linked with filamin, we present an effective medium theory of flexibly cross-linked stiff polymer networks. We model such…
Actin flow in the cortical cytoskeleton underneath the cell membrane generates mechanical stresses that shape the cell surface. We study this mechanism using a hydrodynamic model of a compressible active gel polymerizing at the membrane and…
We derive the effective energy density of thin membranes of liquid crystal elastomers as the Gamma-limit of a widely used bulk model. These membranes can display fine-scale features both due to wrinkling that one expects in thin elastic…
The effective quasistatic conductivity of composite polymeric electrolytes is studied in terms of a hard-core--penetrable-layer model. Used to incorporate the interface phenomena (such as amorphization of the polymer matrix around filler…
Magneto-active elastomers (MAEs) are polymer composites consisting of magnetic microparticles embedded in an elastomeric matrix. These materials exhibit strong magneto-mechanical coupling under external magnetic fields, resulting in tunable…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked polymer networks covalently bonded with liquid crystal mesogens. In the nematic phase, due to strong coupling between mechanical strain and orientational order, these materials display…
The unsteady aerodynamic thrust and aeroelastic response of a two-dimensional membrane airfoil under prescribed harmonic motion are investigated computationally with a high-order Navier-Stokes solver coupled to a nonlinear membrane…
We study the dynamic coarsening of wrinkles in an elastic sheet that is compressed while lying on a thin layer of viscous liquid. When the ends of the sheet are instantaneously brought together by a small distance, viscous resistance…
Recent studies demonstrated that an elastomer containing hygroscopic inclusions absorbs moisture and swell. Here we show that a thin film of such an elastomer bonded to a rigid substrate undergoes morphological instability upon absorption…
Recent experimental observations of anisotropic conductivity in stretched polymer electrolytes films of the polyethylene oxide family are discussed. The main experimental observations, enhancement of the ionic diffusion and conductivity in…
It has been experimentally observed that weakly conducting suspended films of smectic liquid crystals undergo electroconvection when subjected to a large enough potential difference. The resulting counter-rotating vortices form a very…
The study deals with the Payne effect (a substantial decrease in the storage modulus of a particle-reinforced elastomer with an increase in the amplitude of mechanical oscillations). The influence of temperature, concentration of filler and…
We consider a thin horizontal layer of a non-magnetic electrolyte containing a bulk solution of salt and carrying an electric current. The layer is bounded by two deformable free surfaces loaded with an insoluble surfactant and is placed in…
The successful commercialization of flexible spintronic devices requires a complete understanding of the impact of external strain on the structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of a system. The impact of bending-induced strain on…
The supercurrent field effect is experimentally realized in various nano-scale devices, based on the superconductivity suppression by external electric fields being effective for confined systems. In spite of intense research, a microscopic…
We investigate the linear stability of a thin, suspended, annular film of conducting fluid with a voltage difference applied between its inner and outer edges. For a sufficiently large voltage, such a film is unstable to radially-driven…