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Soft slender structures are ubiquitous in natural and artificial systems and can be observed at scales that range from the nanometric to the kilometric, from polymers to space tethers. We present a practical numerical approach to simulate…
This paper presents a novel Embroidery Actuator, a fabric-integrated pneumatic actuator that enables diverse and controllable deformations through embroidery pattern design. Unlike conventional fabric actuators that rely on fiber- or…
Liquid crystal elastomers represent a novel class of programmable shape-transforming materials whose shape change trajectory is encoded in the material's nematic director field. Using three-dimensional nonlinear finite element…
Designing and fabricating structures with specific mechanical properties requires understanding the intricate relationship between design parameters and performance. Understanding the design-performance relationship becomes increasingly…
Grip, walk, crawl, and jump. Soft robots are integrated functional structures composed of compliant mechanisms, whose activity spans various industrial applications such as surgery, healthcare, surveillance, and even planetary exploration.…
Stimuli-responsive liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) with a strong coupling of orientational molecular order and rubber-like elasticity, show a great potential as working elements in soft robotics, sensing, transport and propulsion systems.…
We study the kinematics and dynamics of a highly compliant membrane disk placed head-on in a uniform flow. With increasing flow velocity, the membrane deforms nonlinearly into increasingly parachute-like shapes. These aerodynamically…
We consider planar liquid crystal elastomers: two dimensional objects made of anisotropic responsive materials, that upon activation remain flat however change their planar shape. We derive a closed form, analytical solution based on the…
There is a growing interest in producing materials with mechanical behaviours similar to those of internal organs. An artificial tissue may be expected to experience several types of compressive and shear deformation in the course of normal…
Liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) are shape-changing materials that exhibit large deformations in response to applied stimuli. Local control of the orientation of LCEs spatially directs the deformation of these materials to realize…
Macroscale robotic systems have demonstrated great capabilities of high speed, precise, and agile functions. However, the ability of soft robots to perform complex tasks, especially in centimeter and millimeter scale, remains limited due to…
We study spontaneous deformations of a ribbon made of nematic polymer networks and activated under the action of a mechanical load. We show that when such ribbons are activated appropriately, the deformations produced can pull back and…
Motivated by the buckling of glassy crusts formed on evaporating droplets of polymer and colloid solutions, we numerically model the deformation and buckling of spherical elastic caps controlled by varying the volume between the shell and…
Dielectric elastomers are an emerging class of highly deformable electro-active materials employed for electromechanical transduction technology. For practical applications, the design of such transducers requires a model accounting for…
Soft colloids allow to explore high density states well beyond random close packing. An important open question is whether softness controls the dynamics under these dense conditions. While experimental works reported conflicting results,…
Kinetics of dislocations is studied by means of computer simulation during intensive plastic deformation. The dynamical effect in the form of soliton-like wave of sharply disrupted interparticle bonds is observed. Along with it, micropores…
Photomechanically active materials undergo reversible deformation on illumination, making them ideal for remote, tether-free actuation. Much of the work on these materials has focused on one-dimensional structures, such as strips. In this…
A paradigm for internally driven matter is the active nematic liquid crystal, whereby the equations of a conventional nematic are supplemented by a minimal active stress that violates time reversal symmetry. In practice, active fluids may…
We study the low-frequency, long-wavelength dynamics of soft and semi-soft nematic elastomers using two different but related dynamic theories. Our first formulation describes the pure hydrodynamic behavior of nematic elastomers in which…
Active processes in living systems generate nonequilibrium forces that deform embedded passive macromolecules. To understand how such dynamics influence polymer conformation, we study a flexible passive chain in an active nematic fluid.…