Related papers: Instabilities in liquid crystal elastomers
What characterises a solid is its way to respond to external stresses. Ordered solids, such crystals, display an elastic regime followed by a plastic one, both well understood microscopically in terms of lattice distortion and dislocations.…
Strain-based theory on elastic instabilities is being widely employed for studying onset of plasticity, phase transition or melting in crystals. And size effects, observed in nano-materials or solids under dynamic loadings, needs to account…
The recent discovery of ferroelectric nematics-genuine 3D ferroelectric fluids-has underscored the importance of electrostatic interactions in shaping the physical behaviour of soft matter systems. In this paper, we investigate the…
There is a recent interest in studying odd elasticity in soft solids. Current focus has been on simple solids. However, many soft solids are structured and can exhibit nematic elasticity or viscoelasticity. Here we generalize the concept of…
We discuss instabilities of fluid films of nanoscale thickness, with a particular focus on films where the destabilising mechanism allows for linear instability, metastability, and absolute stability. Our study is motivated by nematic…
Partially wetting nematic liquid crystal (NLC) films on substrates are unstable to dewetting-type instabilities due to destablizing solid/NLC interaction forces. These instabilities are modified by the nematic nature of the films, which…
When liquid-crystalline elastomers pass through the isotropic-nematic transition, the orientational order parameter and the elastic strain vary rapidly but smoothly, without the expected first-order discontinuity. This broadening of the…
Instabilities of fluid-fluid interfaces are ubiquitous in passive soft matter. Adding activity to the interface or either fluid can dramatically change the stability of the interface. Using experiment and theory, we investigate the…
We study elasticity of spontaneously orientationally-ordered amorphous solids, characterized by a vanishing transverse shear modulus, as realized for example by nematic elastomers and gels. We show that local heterogeneities and elastic…
Biological soft tissues exhibit elastic properties which can be dramatically different from rubber-type materials (elastomers). To gain a better understanding of the role of constitutive relationships in determining material responses under…
We consider the orientational instabilities, both homogeneous and spatially periodic, developing in a nematic liquid crystal under rectilinear oscillatory Couette flow for director alignment perpendicular to the flow plane. Using numerical…
The translation and shape deformations of a passive viscous Newtonian droplet immersed in an active nematic liquid crystal under circular confinement are analyzed using a linear stability analysis. We focus on the case of a sharply aligned…
The configuration of the magnetic field in the interior of a neutron star is mostly unknown from observations. Theoretical models of the interior magnetic field geometry tend to be oversimplified to avoid mathematical complexity and tend to…
We study the linear instability with respect to necking of a filament of polymeric fluid undergoing uniaxial extension. Contrary to the widely discussed Considere criterion, we find the onset of instability to relate closely to the onset of…
We study the instability to necking of an initially cylindrical filament of soft glassy material subject to extensional stretching. By numerical simulation of the soft glassy rheology model and a simplified fluidity model, and by analytical…
A statistical theory of cholesteric liquid crystals composed of short rigid biaxial molecules is presented. It is derived in the thermodynamic limit at a small density and a small twist. The uniaxial (biaxial) cholesteric phase is regarded…
Liquid crystal elastomers are rubber-like solids with liquid crystalline mesogens (stiff, rod-like molecules) incorporated either into the main chain or as a side chain of the polymer. These solids display a range of unusual…
When liquid-crystal elastomers are prepared without any alignment, disordered polydomain structures emerge as the materials are cooled into the nematic phase. These polydomain structures have been attributed to quenched disorder in the…
The thermodynamic properties of nuclei are studied in a mean field model using a Skryme interaction. Properties of two component systems are investigated over the complete range of proton fraction from a system of pure neutrons to a system…
We present a unified formulation of a rotationally invariant nonlinear elasticity for a variety of spontaneously anisotropic phases, and use it to study thermal fluctuations in nematic elastomers and spontaneously anisotropic gels. We find…