Related papers: Instabilities in liquid crystal elastomers
Nematic elastomers are programmable soft materials that display large, reversible and predictable deformation under an external stimulus such as a change in temperature or light. While much of the work in the field has focused on actuation…
The properties of liquid crystals can be modelled using an order parameter which describes the variability of the local orientation of rod-like molecules. Defects in the director field can arise due to external factors such as applied…
We consider a phenomenological continuum theory for an extensile, overdamped active nematic liquid crystal, applicable in the dense regime. Constructed from general principles, the theory is universal, with parameters independent of any…
Toroidal nematics are nematic liquid crystals confined within a circular torus and subject to planar degenerate anchoring on the boundary of the torus. They may be droplets floating in an isotropic environment or cavities carved out of a…
Nematic elastomers and glasses deform spontaneously when subjected to temperature changes. This property can be exploited in the design of heterogeneously patterned thin sheets that deform into a non-trivial shape when heated or cooled. In…
As we enter the age of designer matter - where objects can morph and change shape on command - what tools do we need to create shape-shifting structures? At the heart of an elastic deformation is the combination of dilation and distortion,…
We present nonlinear dynamic equations for nematic and smectic $A$ liquid crystals in the presence of an alternating electric field and explain their derivation in detail. The local electric field acting in any liquid-crystalline system is…
Active-elastic instabilities are common phenomena in the natural world which have the aspect of sudden mechanical morphings. Frequently, the driving force of the instability mechanisms has a chemo-mechanical nature which makes these kind of…
By analyzing elastic theory for nematic liquid crystals, we distinguish three regimes of elastic constants. In one regime, the Ericksen inequalities are satisfied, and the ground state of the director field is uniform. In a second regime,…
Shocks in granular media, such as vertically oscillated beds, have been shown to develop instabilities. Similar jet formation has been observed in explosively dispersed granular media. Our previous work addressed this instability by…
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…
The theory of the effect of external fluctuation force on the stability and spatial distribution of mutually interacting and slowly evaporating charged drops, levitated in an electrodynamic balance, is presented using classical…
When a block made of an elastomer is subjected to large shear, its surface remains flat. When a block of biological soft tissue is subjected to large shear, it is likely that its surface in the plane of shear will buckle (apparition of…
The conditions under which stable evolution of two nonlinear interacting waves are derived within the context of nematic crystals. Two cases are considered: plane waves and solitons. In the first case, the modulation instability analysis…
We use three-dimensional phase-field simulations to investigate the dynamics of the two-phase composite patterns formed upon during solidification of eutectic alloys. Besides the spatially periodic lamellar and rod patterns that have been…
Electrostatic theory preserves charges, but allows dipolar excitations. Elasticity theory preserves dipoles, but allows quadrupolar (Eshelby like) plastic events. Charged amorphous granular systems are interesting in their own right; here…
We study the effects of stochastic thermal fluctuations on the instability of the free surface of a flat liquid film upon a solid substrate. These fluctuations are represented as a standard Brownian motion that can be added to the…
The stability of a flow of an electrically conducting, incompressible fluid in a channel with an imposed uniform wall-normal magnetic field and electrically insulating walls is studied using linear stability analysis and direct numerical…
Liquid crystal elastomers are special cross-linked polymer materials combining the large elastic deformability of elastomers with the orientational orders of liquid crystals. This model exhibits markedly different phenomena than the liquid…
The properties of crystals consisting of several components can be widely tuned. Often solid solutions are produced, where substitutional or interstitional disorder determines the crystal thermodynamic and mechanical properties. The…