Related papers: Liquid crystal elastomers and phase transitions in…
Recent studies of azo-dye doped liquid crystal elastomers show a strong photomechanical response. We report on models that predict experimental results that suggest photothermal heating is the dominant mechanism in a planar constrained…
Filamentous bio-materials such as fibrin or collagen networks exhibit an enormous stiffening of their elastic moduli upon large deformations. This pronounced nonlinear behavior stems from a significant separation between the stiffnesses…
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…
Colloidal rods immersed in a thermotropic liquid-crystalline solvent are at the basis of so-called hybrid liquid crystals which are characterized by tunable nematic fluidity with symmetries ranging from conventional uniaxial nematic or…
We present a generic formulation of the continuum elasticity of an isotropic crosslinked active gel. The gel is described by a two-component model consisting of an elastic network coupled frictionally to a permeating fluid. Activity is…
We investigate solid-solid and solid-liquid transitions of elastic flexible off-lattice polymers with Lennard-Jones monomer-monomer interaction and anharmonic springs by means of sophisticated variants of multicanonical Monte Carlo methods.…
We derive a mathematical model of a nematic electrolyte based on a variational formulation of nematodynamics. Extending our previous work, we consider a general setup which incorporates dielectric anisotropy of the liquid-crystalline matrix…
Recent experimental realizations of liquid-liquid phase separation of active liquid crystals have offered an insight into the interaction between phase separation, ubiquitous in soft matter and biology, and chaotic active flows. In this…
A variety of soft and hard condensed matter systems are known to form stripe patterns. Here we use numerical simulations to analyze how such stripe states depin and slide when interacting with a random substrate and with driving in…
We show that the resistive anisotropy of an anisotropic medium is determined by the ratio of the phase coherence lengths. In layered crystals in which the interlayer transport is incoherent, the out-of-plane phase coherence length is fixed…
Here, the general design and properties of new multiple network elastomers with an exceptional combination of stiffness, toughness, and elasticity are reported. In this paper, it is reported in more detail how the increase in strain at…
Using the theory of elasticity of polymer gels we show that large-scale cross-link density patterns written into the structure of the network in the melt state, can be revealed upon swelling by monitoring the monomer density patterns. We…
A novel phenomenological approach to the analysis of the conductivities of incoherent layered crystals is presented. It is based on the fundamental relationship between the resistive anisotropy $\sigma_{ab}/\sigma_c$ and the ratio of the…
Reversible crosslinking is a design paradigm for polymeric materials, wherein they are microscopically reinforced with chemical species that form transient crosslinks between the polymer chains. Besides the potential for self-healing,…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
We explore the diffusion dynamics of a Brownian microparticle in a lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal (LCLC). In the planarly oriented nematic phase, the microparticle exhibits levitation and anisotropic two-dimensional diffusion. Upon…
A general model is formulated for elasto-plastic materials undergoing linear kinematic hardening to describe microstructure evolution associated with phase transformations. Using infinitesimal strain theory, the model is based on…
We construct a coarse-grained model of parallel actin bundles crosslinked by compact, globular bundling proteins, such as fascin and espin, necessary components of filapodial and mechanosensory bundles. Consistent with structural…
We demonstrate that a first order isotropic-to-nematic phase transition in liquid crystals can be succesfully modeled within the generalized Landau-de Gennes theory by selecting an appropriate combination of elastic constants. The numerical…
We consider a continuum model of active viscoelastic matter, whereby an active nematic liquid-crystal is coupled to a minimal model of polymer dynamics with a viscoelastic relaxation time $\tau_C$. To explore the resulting interplay between…