Related papers: Tunable wrinkling of thin nematic liquid crystal e…
We investigate theoretically the wetting properties of cholesteric liquid crystals at a planar substrate. If the properties of substrate and of the interface are such that the cholesteric layers are not distorted the wetting properties are…
In culture migrating and interacting amoeboid cells can form nematic liquid crystal phases. A polar nematic liquid crystal is formed if the interaction has a polar symmetry. One type of white blood cells (granulocytes) form clusters where…
We show that thin sheets under boundary confinement spontaneously generate a universal self-similar hierarchy of wrinkles. From simple geometry arguments and energy scalings, we develop a formalism based on wrinklons, the transition zone in…
While isotropic in-plane swelling problems for thin elastic sheets have been studied extensively in recent years, many shape-programmable materials, including nematic solids and 3D-printed structures, are anisotropic, as are most industrial…
How much energy does it take to stamp a thin elastic shell flat? Motivated by recent experiments on the wrinkling patterns of floating shells, we develop a rigorous method via $\Gamma$-convergence for answering this question to leading…
Wrinkling is commonly observed as mechanical instability when a stiff thin film bound on a compliant thick substrate undergoes in-plane compression exceeding a threshold. Despite significant efforts to create a broad range of surface…
Liquid films coating vertical cylinders can form annular liquid collars which translate downwards under gravity. We investigate the dynamics of a thin viscoplastic liquid film coating the interior or exterior of a vertical cylindrical tube,…
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…
An thin elastic steel plate is excited with a vibrator and its local velocity displays a turbulent-like Fourier spectrum. This system is believed to develop elastic wave turbulence. We analyze here the motion of the plate with a two-point…
After a short review on the physics of pulled threads and their mechanical properties, the paper reports and discusses on the strand elongation of disordered columnar phases, hexagonal or lamello-columnar, of small molecules or polymers.…
Toroidal nematics are nematic liquid crystals confined within a circular torus and subject to planar degenerate anchoring on the boundary of the torus. They may be droplets floating in an isotropic environment or cavities carved out of a…
The adhesion of a stiff film onto a curved substrate often generates elastic stresses in the film that eventually give rise to its delamination. Here we predict that delamination of very thin films can be dramatically suppressed through…
A growing or compressed thin elastic sheet adhered to a rigid substrate can exhibit a buckling instability, forming an inward hump. Our study shows that the strip morphology depends on the delicate balance between the compression energy and…
There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…
Bubbles made of smectic liquid crystals (LC) can display buckling and wrinkling. These deformations are induced in the course of the relaxation of an elongated bubble towards a sphere. The bubbles are created through the collapse of a…
The newly-discovered ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal exhibits a variety of unique defect phenomena. The depolarization field in the material favors spontaneous spatial variations in polarization, manifesting in diverse forms such as…
I shortly describe the main results on elastically driven instabilities and elastic turbulence in viscoelastic inertia-less flows with curved streamlines. Then I describe a theory of elastic turbulence and prediction of elastic waves at…
We analyze the buckling of a rigid thin membrane floating on a dense fluid substrate. The interplay of curvature and substrate energy is known to create wrinkling at a characteristic wavelength $\lambda$, which localizes into a fold at…
We study the equilibrium configuration of a nematic liquid crystal bounded by a rough surface. The wrinkling of the surface induces a partial melting in the degree of orientation. This softened region penetrates the bulk up to a length…
Topological defects are one of the most conspicuous features of liquid crystals. In two dimensional nematics, they have been shown to behave effectively as particles with both, charge and orientation, which dictate their interactions. Here,…