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Soft actuators offer a safe, adaptable approach to tasks like gentle grasping and dexterous manipulation. Creating accurate models to control such systems however is challenging due to the complex physics of deformable materials. Accurate…
Polymer network models construct the constitutive relationships of a broader polymer network from the behavior of a single polymer chain (e.g. viscoelastic response to applied forces, applied electromagnetic fields, etc.). Network models…
Networks of elastic beams can deform either by stretching or bending of their members. The primary mode of deformation (bending or stretching) crucially depends on the specific details of the network architecture. In order to shed light on…
Dense rubbery networks are highly entangled polymer systems, with significant topological restrictions for the mobility of neighbouring chains and crosslinks preventing the reptation constraint release. In a mean field approach,…
This paper presents an in-depth examination of the nonlinear deformation induced by dielectric actuation in pre-stressed ideal dielectric elastomers. A nonlinear ordinary differential equation that governs this deformation is formulated…
The two approaches to analyzing the large strain behavior of rubbery networks are phenomenologically, using strain energy functions drawn from continuum mechanics, and molecular models, which apply statistical mechanics to compute the…
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…
We introduce an entropic network model for copolymer elastomers based on the evolution of microscopic chain conformations during deformation. We show that the stress results from additive contributions due to chain stretch at the global as…
Dielectric materials are critical building blocks for modern electronics such as sensors, actuators, and transistors. With rapid advances in soft and stretchable electronics for emerging human- and robot-interfacing applications, there is a…
The elasticity of rubbery polymer networks has been considered to be entropy-driven. On the other hand, studies on single polymer chain mechanics have revealed that the elasticity of ultimately stretched polymer chains is dominated by the…
The structure of polymer networks, defined by chain lengths and connectivity patterns, fundamentally influences their bulk properties. While existing polymer network models connect chain properties to emergent network behavior, they are…
In the field of soft dielectric elastomers, the notion electrostriction indicates the dependency of the permittivity on strain. The present paper is aimed at investigating the effects of electrostriction onto the stability behaviour of…
Amongst the various fascinating types of material behavior featured by magnetic gels and elastomers are magnetostrictive effects. That is, deformations in shape or changes in volume are induced from outside by external magnetic fields.…
Discrete mesoscale network models, in which explicitly modeled polymer chains are replaced by implicit pairwise potentials, are capable of predicting the macroscale mechanical response of polymeric materials such as elastomers and gels,…
An assumption in micromechanical analysis of polymers is that the constitutive polymeric media is non-porous. Non-porosity of media, however, is merely a simplifying assumption. In this paper, we neglect this assumption and studied polymer…
Here, the general design and properties of new multiple network elastomers with an exceptional combination of stiffness, toughness, and elasticity are reported. In this paper, it is reported in more detail how the increase in strain at…
Soft robotics requires materials that are capable of large deformation and amenable to actuation with external stimuli such as electric fields. Energy harvesting, biomedical devices, flexible electronics and sensors are some other…
Since the invention of polymer networks in the 19th century (e.g., crosslinked natural rubber by Goodyear), it has been a dogma that stiffer networks are less stretchable, a trade-off inherent to the molecular nature of polymer network…
Athermal models of disordered fibrous networks are highly useful for studying the mechanics of elastic networks composed of stiff biopolymers. The underlying network architecture is a key aspect that can affect the elastic properties of…
Soft parallel robots with their manipulation safety and low commercial cost show a promising future for delicate operations and safe human-robot interactions. However, promoting the use of electroactive polymers (EAPs) is still challenging…