Related papers: Optomechanical elastomeric engine
Optomechanics is concerned with the use of light to control mechanical objects. As a field, it has been hugely successful in the production of precise and novel sensors, the development of low-dissipation nanomechanical devices, and the…
We investigate the thermodynamic efficiency of sub-micro-scale heat engines operating under the conditions described by over-damped stochastic thermodynamics. We prove that at maximum power the efficiency obeys for constant isotropic…
A mechanical strain field applied to a monodomain cholesteric elastomer will unwind the helical director distribution. There is an analogy with the classical problem of an electric field applied to a cholesteric liquid crystal, but with…
With the progress of nano-technology, thermodynamics also has to be scaled down, calling for specific protocols to extract and measure work. Usually, such protocols involve the action of an external, classical field (the battery) of…
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…
Heat engines provide most of our mechanical power and are essential for transportation on macroscopic scale. However, although significant progress has been made in the miniaturization of electrostatic engines, it has proven difficult to…
We describe a single fingertip-mounted sensing system for robot manipulation that provides proximity (pre-touch), contact detection (touch), and force sensing (post-touch). The sensor system consists of optical time-of-flight range…
We consider a 2d permanent magnet synchronous machine operating in a sequence of static operating points coming from a drive cycle. We aim to find a rotor design which maximizes the efficiency defined as the quotient of input and output…
The characterization and control of quantum effects in the performance of thermodynamic tasks may open new avenues for small thermal machines working in the nanoscale. We study the impact of coherence in the energy basis in the operation of…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…
We compute the $\Gamma$-limit of energy functionals describing mechanical systems composed of a thin nematic liquid crystal elastomer sustaining a homogeneous and isotropic elastic membrane. We work in the regime of infinitesimal…
Molecular motors convert chemical energy into mechanical work while operating in an environment dominated by Brownian motion. The aim of this paper is to explore the flow of energy between the molecular motors and its surroundings, in…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are a stimuli-responsive material which has been intensively studied for applications including artificial muscles, shape morphing structures, and soft robotics, due to its capability of large, programmable,…
Isothermal information engines operate by extracting net work from a single heat bath through measurement and feedback control. In this work, we analyze a realistic active Szilard engine operating on a single active particle by means of…
Heat engines, which cyclically transform heat into work, are ubiquitous in technology. Lasers and masers, which generate a coherent electromagnetic field, may be viewed as heat engines that rely on population inversion or coherence in the…
We propose quantum engines powered entirely by the quantum measurement process. Our theoretical construction of the engine requires no work from the system Hamiltonian, and takes energy only from the process of observation to move a…
We propose an approach to modeling of AC motors entirely based on analytical mechanics. Symmetry and connection constraints are moreover incorporated in the energy function from which the models are derived. The approach is especially…
We report a study of optomechanical entanglement under the drive of one or a series of laser pulses with arbitrary detuning and different pulse shapes. Because of the non-existence of system steady state under pulsed driving field, we adopt…
The excitation of microresonators using focused intensity modulated light, known as photothermal excitation, is gaining significant attention due to its capacity to accurately excite microresonators without distortions, even in liquid…
We study the low-frequency, long-wavelength dynamics of soft and semi-soft nematic elastomers using two different but related dynamic theories. Our first formulation describes the pure hydrodynamic behavior of nematic elastomers in which…