Related papers: Surface instability in a nematic elastomer
Flagellated microswimmers B. Subtilis dispersed in a nematic phase of a lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal form a living liquid crystal (LLC). The combination of the passive and active components allows us to analyze how the active…
We consider planar liquid crystal elastomers: two dimensional objects made of anisotropic responsive materials, that upon activation remain flat however change their planar shape. We derive a closed form, analytical solution based on the…
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…
We examine the stability of a soft dielectric plate deformed by the coupled effects of a mechanical pre-stress applied on its lateral faces and an electric field applied through its thickness under charge control. The electric field is…
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…
Surface and interfacial energies play important roles in a number of instability phenomena in liquids and soft matters, but are rare to play a similar role in solids. Here we report a new type of mechanical instabilities that are controlled…
Colloidal particles are often seen as big atoms that can be directly observed in real space. They are therefore playing an increasingly important role as model systems to study processes of interest in condensed matter physics such as…
Spatially confined rigid membranes reorganize their morphology in response to the imposed constraints. A crumpled elastic sheet presents a complex pattern of random folds focusing the deformation energy while compressing a membrane resting…
A long elastic cylinder, radius $a$ and shear-modulus $\mu$, becomes unstable given sufficient surface tension $\gamma$. We show this instability can be simply understood by considering the energy, $E(\lambda)$, of such a cylinder subject…
Electron beams in two-dimensional systems can provide a useful tool to study energy-momentum relaxation of electrons and to generate microwave radiation stemming from plasma-beam instabilities. Naturally, these two applications cannot…
The stability of the equilibrium configurations of a nematic liquid crystal confined between two coaxial cylinders is analysed when a radial electric field is applied and the flexoelectric effect is taken into account. The threshold for…
The hydrodynamic stresses created by active particles can destabilise orientational order present in the system. This is manifested, for example, by the appearance of a bend instability in active nematics or in quasi-2-dimensional living…
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,…
We study the solid-to-liquid transition in a two-dimensional fully periodic soft-glassy model with an imposed spatially heterogeneous stress. The model we consider consists of droplets of a dispersed phase jammed together in a continuous…
Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in periodic potentials generate interesting physics on the instabilities of Bloch states. The lowest-energy Bloch states of BECs in pure nonlinear lattices are dynamically and Landau unstable, which breaks…
Spatial heterogeneity in the elastic properties of soft random solids is investigated via a two-pronged approach. First, a nonlocal phenomenological model for the elastic free energy is examined. This features a quenched random kernel,…
The Bloch states of a Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in pure nonlinear lattices (NLs) are dynamically unstable, so that they cannot show superfluidity. We overcome this problem by finding that the two-component BECs in NLs can be…
We deploy linear stability analysis to find the threshold wavelength ($\lambda$) and surface tension ($\gamma$) of Rayleigh-Plateau type "peristaltic" instabilities in incompressible neo-Hookean solids in a range of cylindrical geometries…
From hydrogels and plastics to liquid crystals, soft solids cover a wide array of synthetic and biological materials that play key enabling roles in advanced technologies such as 3D printing, soft robotics, wearable electronics,…
Liquid crystals are synthetic and biological viscoelastic anisotropic soft matter materials that combine liquid fluidity with crystal anisotropy and find use in optical devices, sensor/actuators, lubrication, super-fibers. Frequently…