Related papers: Variational modelling of nematic elastomer foundat…
We analyze a model problem based on highly disparate elastic constants that we propose in order to understand corners and cusps that form on the boundary between the nematic and isotropic phases in a liquid crystal. For a bounded planar…
We investigate the structure of nematic liquid crystal thin films described by the Landau--de Gennes tensor-valued order parameter with Dirichlet boundary conditions of nonzero degree. We prove that as the elasticity constant goes to zero a…
Liquid crystal elastomers realize a fascinating new form of soft matter that is a composite of a conventional crosslinked polymer gel (rubber) and a liquid crystal. These {\em solid} liquid crystal amalgams, quite similarly to their…
We construct a generic coarse-grained dynamics of a thin inflexible planar layer of polar-ordered suspension of active particles, that is frictionally coupled to an embedding isotropic passive fluid medium with a friction coefficient…
The mechanical response of naturally abundant amorphous solids such as gels, jammed grains, and biological tissues are not described by the conventional paradigm of broken symmetry that defines crystalline elasticity. In contrast, the…
The mechanics of a flexible membrane decorated with a nematic liquid-crystal texture is considered in a variational framework. The variations on the splay, twist and the bend energy of the nematics are obtained from the local deformations…
A new energy functional for pure traction problems in elasticity has been deduced in [23] as the variational limit of nonlinear elastic energy functional for a material body subject to an equilibrated force field: a sort of Gamma limit with…
We investigate the dynamics of membranes that are held by freely-rotating tethers in fluid flows. The tethered boundary condition allows periodic and chaotic oscillatory motions for certain parameter values. We characterize the oscillations…
We develop a molecular model of non-uniform deformations within the framework of liquid crystal rubber elasticity. We show that, similarly to the uniform case, the theory is not sensitive to the molecular details of polymer liquid crystal…
We study tensor-valued minimizers of the Landau-de Gennes energy functional on a simply-connected planar domain $\Omega$ with non-contractible boundary data. Here the tensorial field represents the second moment of a local orientational…
We study nematic liquid crystalline films within the framework of the Landau-de Gennes theory in the limit when both the thickness of the film and the nematic correlation length are vanishingly small compared to the lateral extent of the…
We show that nonlinear continuum elasticity can be effective in modeling plastic flows in crystals if it is viewed as Landau theory with an infinite number of equivalent energy wells whose configuration is dictated by the symmetry group…
We analyze an elastic surface energy which was recently introduced by G. Napoli and L.Vergori to model thin films of nematic liquid crystals. We show how a novel approach that takes into account also the extrinsic properties of the surfaces…
We examine the dynamics of a compressible active nematic liquid crystal on a frictional substrate. When frictional damping dominates over viscous dissipation, we eliminate flow in favor of active stresses to obtain a minimal dynamical model…
In this work, we study the effective behavior of a two-dimensional variational model within finite crystal plasticity for high-contrast bilayered composites. Precisely, we consider materials arranged into periodically alternating thin…
Nematic elastomers and glasses are solids that display spontaneous distortion under external stimuli. Recent advances in the synthesis of sheets with controlled heterogeneities have enabled their actuation into non-trivial shapes with…
We study the anomalous elasticity of nematic elastomers by employing the powers of renormalized field theory. Using general arguments of symmetry and relevance, we introduce a minimal Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson elastic energy for nematic…
In this paper, we deduce a macroscopic strain gradient theory for plasticity from a model of discrete dislocations. We restrict our analysis to the case of a cylindrical symmetry for the crystal in exam, so that the mathematical formulation…
We consider a thin film limit of a Landau-de Gennes Q-tensor model. In the limiting process we observe a continuous transition where the normal and tangential parts of the Q-tensor decouple and various intrinsic and extrinsic contributions…
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…