Related papers: Modeling Defects, Shape Evolution, and Programmed …
Interactions between active individuals in animal collectives lead to emergent responses that remain elusive in synthetic soft matter. Here, shape-morphing polymers are used to create bio-inspired transient solids that self-assemble with…
Understanding and controlling the director field configuration, shape, and orientation in nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals is of fundamental importance in several branches of science. Liquid crystalline droplets, also known as…
The present contribution investigates the well-posedness of a PDE system describing the evolution of a nematic liquid crystal flow under kinematic transports for molecules of different shapes. More in particular, the evolution of the {\em…
The geometric shape, symmetry, and topology of colloidal particles often allow for controlling colloidal phase behavior and physical properties of these soft matter systems. In liquid crystalline dispersions, colloidal particles with low…
Electro-hydrodynamic phenomena in liquid crystals constitute an old but still very active research area. The reason is that these phenomena play the key role in various applications of liquid crystals and due to the general interest of…
Long range order and symmetry in heterogeneous materials architected on crystal lattices lead to elastic and inelastic anisotropies and thus limit mechanical functionalities in particular crystallographic directions. Here, we present a…
A range of monodomain nematic liquid crystal elastomers containing differing proportions of photo-isomerisable mesogenic moieties, which turn from a rod-like to a kinked shape upon ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, was studied. Depending on the…
Using molecular dynamics we investigate the thermodynamics, dynamics and structure of 250 diatomic molecules interacting by a core-softened potential. This system exhibits thermodynamics, dynamics and structural anomalies: a maximum in…
We propose that ballooning can be controlled, enriched and amplified by using rubbery networks of aligned molecular rods known as liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs). Firstly, LCEs are promising artificial muscles, showing large spontaneous…
Elastomers saturated with gas at high pressure suffer from cavity nucleation, inflation, and deflation upon rapid or explosive de-compression. Although this process often results in undetectable changes in appearance, it causes internal…
Defects are a ubiquitous feature of ordered media. They have certain universal features, independent of the underlying physical system, reflecting their topological origins. While the topological properties of defects are robust, they…
There is a recent interest in studying odd elasticity in soft solids. Current focus has been on simple solids. However, many soft solids are structured and can exhibit nematic elasticity or viscoelasticity. Here we generalize the concept of…
Pattern formation in uniaxial polymeric liquid crystals is studied for different dynamic closure approximations. Using the principles of mesoscopic non-equilibrium thermodynamics in a mean-field approach, we derive a Fokker-Planck equation…
Thin bilayers made of elastic sheets with different strain recoveries can be used for dynamic shape morphing through ambient stimuli, such as temperature, mass diffusion, and light. As a fundamentally different approach to designing…
We introduce novel finite element schemes for curve diffusion and elastic flow in arbitrary codimension. The schemes are based on a variational form of a system that includes a specifically chosen tangential motion. We derive optimal $L^2$-…
We investigate the finite bending and the associated bending instability of an incompressible dielectric slab subject to a combination of applied voltage and axial compression, using nonlinear electro-elasticity theory and its incremental…
Ordinary nematic liquid crystals are characterized by having a uniform director field as ground state. In such a state, the director is the same everywhere and no distortion is to be seen at all. We give a definition of uniform distortion…
The physics of behavior seeks simple descriptions of animal behavior. The field has advanced rapidly by using techniques in low dimensional dynamics distilled from computer vision. Yet, we still do not generally understand the rules which…
Motivated by problems arising in tear film dynamics, we present a model for the extensional flow of thin sheets of nematic liquid crystal. The rod-like molecules of these substances impart an elastic contribution to its response. We rescale…
This paper demonstrates the computational design of soft elastomeric pneumatic actuators using nonlinear topology optimization. An existing density- and porohyperelasticity-based topology optimization framework was extended from 2D to 3D…