Related papers: Nematic director fields and topographies of shells…

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the study of shape formation using modern responsive materials that can be preprogrammed to undergo spatially inhomogeneous local deformations. In particular, nematic liquid crystalline…

Thin nematic elastomers, composite hydrogels and plant tissues are among many systems that display uniform anisotropic deformation upon external actuation. In these materials, the spatial orientation variation of a local director field…

Nematic solids respond strongly to changes in ambient heat or light, significantly differently parallel and perpendicular to the director. This phenomenon is well characterized for uniform director fields, but not for defect textures. We…

We revisit the light or heat-induced changes in topography of initially flat sheets of solid that elongate or contract along patterned, in-plane director fields. For radial or azimuthal directors, negative Gaussian curvature is generated --…

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…

Considerable recent attention has been given to the study of shape formation using modern responsive materials that can be preprogrammed to undergo spatially inhomogeneous local deformations. In particular, nematic liquid crystal polymer…

We explore a novel strategy of patterning nematic elastomers that does not require inscribing the texture directly. It is based on varying the dopant concentration that, beside shifting the phase transition point, affects the nematic…

Liquid crystal elastomers and glasses can have significant shape change determined by their director patterns. Cones deformed from circular director patterns have non-trivial Gaussian curvature localised at tips, curved interfaces, and…

Gaussian-curved shapes are obtained by inflating initially flat systems made of two superimposed strong and light thermoplastic impregnated fabric sheets heat-sealed together along a specific network of lines. The resulting inflated…

Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) can undergo large reversible contractions along their nematic director upon heating or illumination. A spatially patterned director within a flat LCE sheet thus encodes a pattern of contraction on heating,…

We merge classical origami concepts with active actuation by designing origami patterns whose panels undergo prescribed metric changes. These metric changes render the system non-Euclidean, inducing non-zero Gaussian curvature at the…

We study the propagation of orientation waves in a director field with rotational inertia and potential energy given by the Oseen-Frank energy functional from the continuum theory of nematic liquid crystals. There are two types of waves,…

From incompressible flows to electrostatics, harmonic functions can provide solutions to many two-dimensional problems and, similarly, the director field of a planar nematic can be determined using complex analysis. We derive a closed-form…

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…

Weingarten surfaces are those whose principal curvatures satisfy a functional relation, whose set of solutions is called the curvature diagram or the W-diagram of the surface. Making use of the notion of geometric linear momentum of a plane…

We solve the problem of prescribing different types of curvatures (principal, mean or Gaussian) on rotational surfaces in terms of arbitrary continuous functions depending on the distance from the surface to the axis of revolution. In this…

By means of computer simulations we study how droplets of hard, rod-like particles optimize their shape and internal structure under the influence of the osmotic compression caused by the presence of spherical particles that act as…

Topological defects are ubiquitous on surfaces with orientational order fields. Here, we study equilibrium states generated by the feedback between geometry and nematic order on fluid membranes with an integer topological defect. When the…

Nematic tactoids are spindle-shaped droplets of a nematic phase nucleated in the co-existing isotropic phase. According to equilibrium theory, their internal structure and shape are controlled by a balance between the elastic deformation of…

Within the framework of continuum theory, we draw a parallel between ferromagnetic materials and nematic liquid crystals confined on curved surfaces, which are both characterized by local interaction and anchoring potentials. We show that…