Related papers: Actuation of thin nematic elastomer sheets with co…
Nematic elastomers are rubbery solids which have liquid crystals incorporated into their polymer chains. These materials display many unusual mechanical properties, one such being the ability to form fine-scale microstructure. In this work,…
Nematic polymeric networks are (heat and light) activable materials, which combine the features of rubber and nematic liquid crystals. When only the stretching energy of a thin sheet of nematic polymeric network is minimized, the intrinsic…
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…
Elastic models of the glass transition relate the relaxation dynamics and the elastic properties of structural glasses. They are based on the assumption that the relaxation dynamics occurs through activated events in the energy landscape…
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…
Athermal (i.e. zero-temperature) under-constrained systems are typically floppy, but they can be rigidified by the application of external strain, which is theoretically well understood. Here and in the companion paper, we extend this…
We compute effective energies of thin bilayer structures composed by soft nematic elastic-liquid crystals in various geometrical regimes and functional configurations. Our focus is on order-strain interaction in elastic foundations composed…
In the direct approach to continua in reduced space dimensions, a thin shell is described as a mathematical surface in three-dimensional space. An exploratory kinematic study of such surfaces could be very valuable, especially if conducted…
We consider a thin elastic sheet in the shape of a disk whose reference metric is that of a singular cone. I.e., the reference metric is flat away from the center and has a defect there. We define a geometrically fully nonlinear free…
A hydrostatically stressed soft elastic film circumvents the imposed constraint by undergoing a morphological instability, the wavelength of which is dictated by the minimization of the surface and the elastic strain energies of the film.…
Liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) are shape-changing materials that exhibit large deformations in response to applied stimuli. Local control of the orientation of LCEs spatially directs the deformation of these materials to realize…
What characterises a solid is its way to respond to external stresses. Ordered solids, such crystals, display an elastic regime followed by a plastic one, both well understood microscopically in terms of lattice distortion and dislocations.…
It is known by now that amorphous solids at zero temperature do not possess a nonlinear elasticity theory: besides the shear modulus which exists, all the higher order coefficients do not exist in the thermodynamic limit. Here we show that…
Large deformations of soft elastic beads spinning at high angular velocity in a denser background fluid are investigated theoretically, numerically, and experimentally using millimeter-size polyacrylamide hydrogel particles introduced in a…
The paper considers the general case of incompressible non-classical elasticity with small deformations and rotations. The thermodynamic stability is analysed for free energy density with three rotational degrees of freedom. Although the…
We present a new finite deformation, dynamic finite element model that incorporates surface tension to capture elastocapillary effects on the electromechanical deformation of dielectric elastomers. We demonstrate the significant effect that…
Amongst the various fascinating types of material behavior featured by magnetic gels and elastomers are magnetostrictive effects. That is, deformations in shape or changes in volume are induced from outside by external magnetic fields.…
The elastic properties of hcp $^4$He samples have been shown to display various anomalies. The elastic shear modulus stiffens and the moment of rotational inertia drops when the temperature is lowered below $\sim$ 0.2 K. The relation…
For monodomain nematic elastomers, we construct generalised elastic-nematic constitutive models combining purely elastic and neoclassical-type strain-energy densities. Inspired by recent developments in stochastic elasticity, we extend…
We derive expressions for the lowest nonlinear elastic constants of amorphous solids in athermal conditions (up to third order), in terms of the interaction potential between the constituent particles. The effect of these constants cannot…