Related papers: Shape Morphing of Planar Liquid Crystal Elastomers
We propose an approach to measure surface elastic constants of soft solids. Generally, this requires one to probe interfacial mechanics at around the elastocapillary length scale, which is typically microscopic. Deformations of microscopic…
We consider a class of liquid crystal free-boundary problems for which both the equilibrium shape and internal configuration of a system must simultaneously be determined, for example in films with air- or fluid-liquid crystal interfaces…
We consider three-dimensional reshaping of a thin nematoelastic film upon nematic-isotropic transition in the field of a charge one topological defect, leading to either cone or anticone (d-cone) shells. The analysis is based on the…
Magnetic gels and elastomers are promising candidates to construct reversibly excitable soft actuators, triggered from outside by magnetic fields. These magnetic fields induce or alter the magnetic interactions between discrete rigid…
We investigate theoretically the morphology of a thin nematic film adsorbed at flat substrate patterned by stripes with alternating aligning properties, normal and tangential respectively. We construct a simple "exactly-solvable" effective…
A body immersed in a nematic liquid crystal disturbs the fluid's preferred molecular configuration and increases its stored elastic energy. In an active nematic, the fluid components also generate a stress in the bulk fluid. By introducing…
Using both experiments and finite element simulations, we explore the shape evolution of off-axis nematic elastomer ribbons as a function of temperature. The elastomers are prepared by cross-linking the mesogens with planar anchoring of the…
Nematic elastomers with a locked-in anisotropy direction exhibit semi-soft elastic response characterized by a plateau in the stress-strain curve in which stress does not change with strain. We calculate the global phase diagram for a…
Recent experimental observations have suggested that topological defects can facilitate the creation of sharp features in developing embryos. Whereas these observations echo established knowledge about the interplay between geometry and…
Nematic liquid crystals in a polyhedral domain, a prototype for bistable displays, may be described by a unit-vector field subject to tangent boundary conditions. Here we consider the case of a rectangular prism. For configurations with…
Most, but not all, liquid crystals tend to align when subject to shear flow, while most nematic polymeric liquid crystals undergo a tumbling instability, where the director rotate with the flow. The reasons of this instability remain…
By Monte Carlo simulations of a soft ellipsoid model for liquid crystals, we study whether a layer of grafted liquid-crystalline chain molecules can induce tilt in a nematic fluid. The chains are fairly short (four monomers) and made of the…
Recent experiments have reported a novel splay nematic phase, which has alternating domains of positive and negative splay. To model this phase, previous studies have considered a 1D splay modulation of the director field, accompanied by a…
We revisit the light or heat-induced changes in topography of initially flat sheets of solid that elongate or contract along patterned, in-plane director fields. For radial or azimuthal directors, negative Gaussian curvature is generated --…
We aimed to use finite element method to simulate the unique behaviors of liquid crystal elastomer, such as semi-soft elasticity, stripe domain instabilities etc. We started from an energy functional with the 2D Bladon-Warner-Terentjev…
A nematic liquid crystal in contact with a grating surface possessing an alternating stripe pattern of locally homeotropic and planar anchoring is studied within the Frank--Oseen model. The combination of both chemical and geometrical…
Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…
Motivated by problems arising in tear film dynamics, we present a model for the extensional flow of thin sheets of nematic liquid crystal. The rod-like molecules of these substances impart an elastic contribution to its response. We rescale…
Materials exhibiting a large caloric effect could lead to the development of new generation of heat-management technologies that will have better energy efficiency and be potentially more environmentally friendly. The focus of caloric…
In search for novel nematic materials, a laterally linked H-shaped liquid crystal dimer have been synthesized and characterized. The distinct feature of the material is a very broad temperature range (about 50 oC) of the nematic phase,…