Related papers: Actuation of thin nematic elastomer sheets with co…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While stress-strain curves for a wide range of temperature can be fit to the functional form predicted by entropic network models, many other…
Cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers have interesting and potentially very useful photonic properties. In an ideal monodomain configuration of these materials, one finds a Bragg-reflection of light in a narrow wavelength range and a…
Motivated by the need for new materials and green energy production and conversion processes, a class of mathematical models for liquid crystal elastomers integrated within a theoretical charge pump electrical circuit is considered. The…
We consider the simplest one-constant model, put forward by J. Ericksen, for nematic liquid crystals with variable degree of orientation. The equilibrium state is described by a director field $\mathbf{n}$ and its degree of orientation $s$,…
We present a theory of deformation of ribbons made of nematic polymer networks (NPNs). These materials exhibit properties of rubber and nematic liquid crystals, and can be activated by external stimuli of heat and light. A two-dimensional…
Liquid Crystalline Elastomers (LCEs) are active materials that are of interest due to their programmable response to various external stimuli such as light and heat. When exposed to these stimuli, the anisotropy in the response of the…
A continuum mechanical framework is developed for determining a) the class of stress-free deformed shapes and corresponding director distributions on the undeformed configuration of a nematic glass membrane that has a prescribed spontaneous…
Liquid crystal elastomers are rubbers with liquid crystal order. They contract along their nematic director when heated or illuminated. The shape changes are large and occur in a relatively narrow temperature interval, or at low…
Periodic field patterns of atoms and their charges/spins/orbits emerge in crystals, forming novel states of matter called emergent crystals (ECs). In recent years, they are observed in diverse systems such as skyrmion crystals in…
When a flexible plate is peeled off a thin and soft elastic film bonded to a rigid support, uniformly spaced fingering patterns develop along their line of contact. While, the wavelength of these patterns depends only on the thickness of…
We derive a F\"{o}ppl-von K\'{a}rm\'{a}n-type constitutive model for solid liquid crystalline plates where the nematic director may or may not rotate freely relative to the elastic network. To obtain the reduced two-dimensional model, we…
This paper focuses on the homogenization of high-contrast dielectric elastomer composites, materials that deform in response to electrical stimulation. The considered heterogeneous material consisting of an ambient material with inserted…
A new result enables direct calculation of thermoelastic damping in vibrating elastic solids. The mechanism for energy loss is thermal diffusion caused by inhomogeneous deformation, flexure in thin plates. The general result is combined…
Magnetic gels and elastomers are promising candidates to construct reversibly excitable soft actuators, triggered from outside by magnetic fields. These magnetic fields induce or alter the magnetic interactions between discrete rigid…
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…
Dielectric elastomers are an emerging class of highly deformable electro-active materials employed for electromechanical transduction technology. For practical applications, the design of such transducers requires a model accounting for…
We hypothesize that in a non-metallic crystalline structure under extreme pressures, atomic wavefunctions deform to adopt a reduced rotational symmetry consistent with minimizing interstitial space in the crystal. We exemplify with a simple…
We model polydomain liquid-crystal elastomers by extending the neo-classical soft and semi-soft free energies used successfully to describe monodomain samples. We show that there is a significant difference between polydomains cross-linked…
Highly engineered materials are arousing great interest because of their ability to manipulate heat, as described by coordinate transformation approach. Based on the recently developed analog gravity models, this paper presents how a simple…
We study the role of elasticity-induced facilitation on the dynamics of glass-forming liquids by a coarse-grained two-dimensional model in which local relaxation events, taking place by thermal activation, can trigger new relaxations by…