Related papers: Modeling Defects, Shape Evolution, and Programmed …
Liquid Crystal Elastomers with near-ambient temperature-responsiveness (NAT-LCEs) have been extensively studied for building bio-compatible, low-power consumption devices and robotics. However, conventional manufacturing methods face…
Natural filaments, such as proteins, plant tendrils, octopus tentacles, and elephant trunks, can transform into arbitrary three-dimensional shapes that carry out vital functions. Their shape-morphing behavior arises from intricate…
A variety of complex fluids consist in soft, round objects (foams, emulsions, assemblies of copolymer micelles or of multilamellar vesicles -- also known as onions). Their dense packing induces a slight deviation from their prefered…
Growth-elasticity is a powerful model framework for understanding complex shape development in soft biological tissues. At each instant, by mapping how continuum building blocks have grown geometrically and how they respond elastically to…
Liquid crystal networks combine the orientational order of liquid crystals with the elastic properties of polymer networks, leading to a vast application potential in the field of responsive coatings, e.g., for haptic feedback,…
A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…
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…
We study the nucleation dynamics of a model solid state transformation and the criterion for microstructure selection using a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Our simulations show a range of microstructures depending on the depth of…
Freestanding tubular crystals offer a general description of crystalline order on deformable surfaces with cylindrical topology, such as single-walled carbon nanotubes, microtubules, and recently reported colloidal assemblies. These systems…
Inspired by the cellular design of plant tissue, we present a new approach to make versatile, tough, highly water-swelling composites. We embed highly swelling hydrogel particles inside tough, water-permeable, elastomeric matrices. The…
As we enter the age of designer matter - where objects can morph and change shape on command - what tools do we need to create shape-shifting structures? At the heart of an elastic deformation is the combination of dilation and distortion,…
Mechanical extremal materials, a class of metamaterials that exist at the bounds of elastic theory, possess the extraordinary capability to engineer any desired elastic behavior by harnessing mechanical zero modes -- deformation modes that…
Deformations of conventional solids are described via elasticity, a classical field theory whose form is constrained by translational and rotational symmetries. However, flexible metamaterials often contain an additional approximate…
A method for adaptive model order reduction for nonsmooth discrete element simulation is developed and analysed in numerical experiments. Regions of the granular media that collectively move as rigid bodies are substituted with rigid bodies…
We give a description of the intrinsic geometry of elastic distortions in three-dimensional nematic liquid crystals and establish necessary and sufficient conditions for a set of functions to represent these distortions by describing how…
Recent experiments have imposed controlled swelling patterns on thin polymer films, which subsequently buckle into three-dimensional shapes. We develop a solution to the design problem suggested by such systems, namely, if and how one can…
In amorphous materials, plasticity is localized and occurs as shear transformations. It was recently shown by Wu et al. that these shear transformations can be predicted by applying topological defect concepts developed for liquid crystals…
The elastic response of the crystalline sheet to the stretching deformation in the form of wrinkles has been extensively investigated. In this work, we extend this fundamental scientific question to the plastic regime by exploring the…
The Ericksen model for nematic liquid crystals couples a director field with a scalar degree of orientation variable, and allows the formation of various defects with finite energy. We propose a simple but novel finite element approximation…
Computational modelling offers a cost-effective and time-efficient alternative to experimental studies in biomedical engineering. In cardiac electro-mechanics, finite element method (FEM)-based simulations provide valuable insights into…