Related papers: Shape Morphing of Planar Liquid Crystal Elastomers
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…
Liquid crystal elastomers and glasses can have significant shape change determined by their director patterns. Cones deformed from circular director patterns have non-trivial Gaussian curvature localised at tips, curved interfaces, and…
We consider a continuum model describing the dynamic behavior of nematic liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) and implement a numerical scheme to solve the governing equations. In the model, the Helmholtz free energy and Rayleigh dissipation…
This letter presents a closed-form integral-equation formulation that models the director tilting in nematic liquid crystals. The proposed formulation is computationally efficient compared to numerical methods and provides a physical…
Anisotropic fluids, such as nematic liquid crystals, can form non-spherical equilibrium shapes known as tactoids. Predicting the shape of these structures as a function of material parameters is challenging and paradigmatic of a broader…
We describe electrophoresis of spherical dielectric particles in a uniformly aligned nematic medium with a negative dielectric anisotropy. A spherical particle that orients the liquid crystal (LC) perpendicularly to its surface moves under…
We demonstrate facile optical manipulation of shape of birefringent colloidal microparticles made from liquid crystal elastomers. Using soft lithography and polymerization, we fabricate elastomeric microcylinders with weakly undulating…
Liquid crystal elastomers are rubbery solids that couple liquid crystalline order and deformation. This coupling leads to properties that are attractive for a number of applications in soft robotics and energy absorption. This paper is…
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 deformation and flow of disordered solids, such as metallic glasses and concentrated emulsions, involves swift localized rearrangements of particles that induce a long-range deformation field. To describe these heterogeneous processes,…
Soft actuators allow to transform external stimuli to mechanical deformations. Because of their deformational response to external magnetic fields, magnetic gels and elastomers represent ideal candidates for such tasks. Mostly, linear…
The paper is concerned with various issues surrounding the mathematical description of defects in models of liquid crystals, drawing on experience from solid mechanics. The roles played by a suitable choice of function space and by the…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are rubber-like solids that incorporate nematic mesogens (stiff rod-like molecules) as a part of their polymer chains. In recent years, isotropic-genesis, polydomain liquid crystal elastomers (I-PLCEs) has…
We study the kinetics of the nematic-isotropic transition in a two-dimensional liquid crystal by using a lattice Boltzmann scheme that couples the tensor order parameter and the flow consistently. Unlike in previous studies, we find the…
In this article we deduce necessary and sufficient conditions for the presence of `Conti-type', highly symmetric, exactly-stress free constructions in the geometrically non-linear, planar $n$-well problem, generalising results of [CKZ17].…
Due to elastic anisotropy, two-dimensional patterning of substrates can promote weak azimuthal alignment of adjacent nematic liquid crystals. Here, we consider how such alignment can be achieved using a periodic square lattice of circular…
We develop a molecular model of non-uniform deformations within the framework of liquid crystal rubber elasticity. We show that, similarly to the uniform case, the theory is not sensitive to the molecular details of polymer liquid crystal…
Topological defects, such as disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals, are fundamental to many physical systems and applications. In this work, we study the behavior of nematic disclinations in thin parallel-plate geometries with…
We model within the framework of finite elasticity two inherent instabilities observed in liquid crystal elastomers under uniaxial tension. First is necking which occurs when a material sample suddenly elongates more in a small region where…
Nematic elastomers are a particular class of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) that exhibit both liquid-crystalline order and rubber (entropic) elasticity. This combination makes them stimuli-responsive soft materials with a number of…