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Liquid Crystal Elastomers with near-ambient temperature-responsiveness (NAT-LCEs) have been extensively studied for building bio-compatible, low-power consumption devices and robotics. However, conventional manufacturing methods face…
Shell buckling is central in many biological structures and advanced functional materials, even if, traditionally, this elastic instability has been regarded as a catastrophic phenomenon to be avoided for engineering structures. Either way,…
Much recent progress has been made in the study of nematic solids, both glassy and elastomeric, particularly in the realm of stress-free, defect-driven deformation in thin sheets of material. In this paper we consider a subset of texture…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are soft phase-changing solids that exhibit large reversible contractions upon heating, Goldstone-like soft modes and resultant microstructural instabilities. We heat a planar LCE slab to isotropic, clamp…
Soft robotic systems are known for their flexibility and adaptability, but traditional physics-based models struggle to capture their complex, nonlinear behaviors. This study explores a data-driven approach to modeling the…
Active emulsions and liquid crystalline shells are intriguing and experimentally realisable types of topological matter. Here we numerically study the morphology and spatiotemporal dynamics of a double emulsion, where one or two passive…
Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are polycrystalline, rod-shaped nanoparticles isolated from cellulose, which have attracted increasing attention for a wide variety of applications. While there has been significant research into CNCs in…
Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate the plastic response of a model glass to a local shear transformation in a quiescent system. The deformation of the material is induced by a spherical inclusion that is gradually…
In this paper, we speculate on a possible application of Liquid Crystal Elastomers to the field of soft robotics. In particular, we study a concept for limbless locomotion that is amenable to miniaturisation. For this purpose, we formulate…
Active deformable filaments exhibit a large range of qualitatively different three-dimensional dynamics, depending on their flexibility, the strength and nature of the active forcing, and the surrounding environment. We investigate the…
The systematic errors due to the practical implementation of the Contact Dynamics method for simulation of dense granular media are examined. It is shown that, using the usual iterative solver to simulate a chain of rigid particles,…
We analyze a model of mutually-propelled filaments suspended in a two-dimensional solvent. The system undergoes a mean-field isotropic-nematic transition for large enough filament concentrations and the nematic order parameter is allowed to…
Polymeric materials that couple deformation and electrostatics have the potential for use in soft sensors and actuators with potential applications ranging from robotic, biomedical, energy, aerospace and automotive technologies. In contrast…
Thermal fluctuations strongly modify the large length-scale elastic behavior of crosslinked membranes, giving rise to scale-dependent elastic moduli. While thermal effects in flat membranes are well understood, many natural and artificial…
Calculating by analytical theory the deformation of finite-sized elastic bodies in response to internally applied forces is a challenge. Here, we derive explicit analytical expressions for the amplitudes of modes of surface deformation of a…
Deployable structures, essential across various engineering applications ranging from umbrellas to satellites, are evolving to include soft, morphable designs where geometry drives transformation. However, a major challenge for soft…
We theoretically study the nematic ordering transition of rods that are able to elastically adjust their mutually excluded volumes. The model rods, which consist of a hard core surrounded by a deformable shell, mimic the structure of…
Emulsions comprising isotropic fluid drops within a nematic host are of interest for applications ranging from biodetection to smart windows, which rely on changes of molecular alignment structures around the drops in response to chemical,…
We present an experimental method to fabricate centimetric thin elastic capsules with highly uniform thickness and negligible bending stiffness using silicone elastomers. In our experiments, the capsules thickness is tunable at fabrication,…
Soft matters whose constituents are deformable are ubiquitous in nature especially in biological systems-including cells and their organelles-as well as in foams and emulsions. The capacity for deformation in these soft materials gives rise…