Related papers: Statistical Mechanical Analysis of the Electromech…
Constitutive modeling of dielectric elastomers has been of long standing interest in mechanics. Over the last two decades rigorous constitutive models have been developed that couple the electrical response of these polymers with large…
Dielectric elastomers (DEs) that couple deformation and electrostatics have the potential for use in soft sensors and actuators with applications ranging from robotic, biomedical, energy, aerospace and automotive technologies. However,…
The electromechanical response of polymeric soft matter to applied electric fields is of fundamental scientific interest as well as relevant to technologies for sensing and actuation. Several existing theoretical and numerical approaches…
Statistical mechanics is an important tool for understanding polymer electroelasticity because the elasticity of polymers is primarily due to entropy. However, a common approach for the statistical mechanics of polymer chains, the Gaussian…
This work introduces a methodology for the statistical mechanical analysis of polymeric chains under tension controlled by optical or magnetic tweezers at thermal equilibrium with an embedding fluid medium. The response of single bonds…
The stretching response of polymer chains fundamentally determines the mechanical properties of polymer networks. In this Letter, we develop a statistical mechanics model that incorporates both bond stretching and bond angle deformation,…
We propose a protocol to model accurately the electromechanical behavior of dielectric elastomer membranes using experimental data of stress-stretch and voltage-stretch tests. We show how the relationship between electric displacement and…
In this work, the Cosserat formulation of geometrically exact beam dynamics is extended by adding the electric potential as an additional degree of freedom to account for the electromechanical coupling in the Dielectric Elastomer Actuators…
Polymer networks formed by cross linking flexible polymer chains are ubiquitous in many natural and synthetic soft-matter systems. Current micromechanics models generally do not account for excluded volume interactions except, for instance,…
Predicting the macroscopic mechanical behavior of polymeric materials from the micro-structural features has remained a challenge for decades. Existing theoretical models often fail to accurately capture the experimental data, due to…
A fundamental theory is presented for the mechanical response of polymer networks undergoing large deformation which seamlessly integrates statistical mechanical principles with macroscopic thermodynamic constitutive theory. Our formulation…
We report that a dielectric polymer chain, constrained at both ends, sharply collapses when exposed to a high electric field. The chain collapse is driven by nonlocal dipolar interactions and anisotropic polarization of monomers, a…
Analytical relations for the mechanical response of single polymer chains are valuable for modeling purposes, on both the molecular and the continuum scale. These relations can be obtained using statistical thermodynamics and an idealized…
Elastomers are used in a wide range of applications because of their large strain to failure, low density, and tailorable stiffness and toughness. The mechanical behavior of elastomers derives mainly from the entropic elasticity of the…
We present an analytical theory for heteropolymer deformation, as exemplified experimentally by stretching of single protein molecules. Using a mean-field replica theory, we determine phase diagrams for stress-induced unfolding of typical…
Taking into account the nonequivalence of fixed-force and fixed-length ensembles in the weak-force regime, equations of state are derived that describe the equilibrium extension or compression of an ideal Gaussian polymer chain in response…
The recent discovery of electro-active polymers has shown great promises in the field of soft robotics, and was logically followed by experimental, numerical and theoretical developments. Most of these studies were concerned with systems…
Herein, we describe new methods to produce colloidal particle chains of three stiffness regimes that can be observed on a single-particle level, that is, on the level of the monomers that make up the chain; the chains can even be observed…
Due to the increasing number of industrial applications of electro-active polymers (EAPs), there is a growing need for electromechanical models which accurately capture their behavior. To this end, we compare the predicted behavior of EAPs…
Stretching dynamics of polymers in microfluidics is of particular interest for polymer scientists. As a charged polymer, a polyelectrolyte can be deformed from its coiled equilibrium configuration to an extended chain by applying uniform or…