Related papers: Surface instability in a nematic elastomer
Mechanical deformation of amorphous solids can be described as consisting of an elastic part in which the stress increases linearly with strain, up to a yield point at which the solid either fractures or starts deforming plastically. It is…
A nematic liquid-crystal gel is a macroscopically homogeneous elastic medium with the rotational symmetry of a nematic liquid crystal. In this paper, we develop a general approach to the study of these gels that incorporates all underlying…
Liquid shells (e.g. double emulsions, vesicles etc.) are susceptible to interfacial instability and rupturing when driven out of mechanical equilibrium. This poses a significant challenge for the design of liquid shell based micro-machines,…
Motivated by recent experimental observations [U. Delabre et al, Langmuir 24, 3998, 2008] we reconsider an instability of ultrathin nematic films, spread on liquid substrates. Within a continuum elastic theory of liquid crystals, in the…
This article models experimentally observed three dimensional particle-like waves that develop in nematic liquid crystals, with negative dielectric and conductive anisotropy, when subject to an applied alternating electric field. The liquid…
I put forward a continuum theory for active nematic gels, defined as fluids or suspensions of orientable rodlike objects endowed with active dynamics, that is based on symmetry arguments and compatibility with thermodynamics. The starting…
We report on a new class of electromagnetically-driven fluid interface instability. Using the optical radiation pressure of a cw laser to bend a very soft near-critical liquid-liquid interface, we show that it becomes unstable for…
Liquid-crystal networks consist of weakly crosslinked polymers that are coupled to liquid-crystal molecules. The resultant hybrid system has rich elastic properties. We develop a phase field model to describe mechanical properties of a…
This work investigates the morphological stability of a soft body composed of two heavy elastic layers, attached to a rigid surface and subjected only to the bulk gravity force. Using theoretical and computational tools, we characterize the…
Thin dielectric elastomers with compliant electrodes exhibit various types of instability under the action of electromechanical loading. Guided by the thermodynamically-based formulation of Fosdick and Tang (J. Elasticity 88, 255-297,…
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…
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 study the dynamics of small fluctuations about the uniform state of a crystal moving through a dissipative medium, e.g. a sedimenting colloidal crystal or a moving flux lattice, using a set of continuum equations for the displacement…
Soft solids exhibit instability and develop surface undulations due to surface effects, a phenomenon known as the elastic Plateau-Rayleigh (PR) instability, driven by the interplay of surface and bulk elasticity. Previous studies on the PR…
Compression-induced buckling instability of metal thin films on a compliant base result in surface wrinkles. A stiff thin film, perfectly bonded to an infinitely deep pre-stretched dielectric elastomer (DE) substrate, is considered. Linear…
An existence of the charge-induced instability is well known for the 4He crystal surface in the rough state. Much less is known about charge-induced instability at the 4He crystal surface in the smooth well-faceted state below the…
The phase-field-crystal model for liquid crystals is solved numerically in two spatial dimensions. This model is formulated with three position-dependent order parameters, namely the reduced translational density, the local nematic order…
Polarization flutter, produced by an applied AC electric field drives an equilibrium ferroelectric nematic ($\mathrm{N_F}$) liquid crystal (LC) through a transition into a dissipative active ferroelectric nematic state exhibiting strong…
We present a new finite deformation, dynamic finite element model that incorporates surface tension to capture elastocapillary effects on the electromechanical deformation of dielectric elastomers. We demonstrate the significant effect that…
Sulci are surface folds commonly seen in strained soft elastomers and form via a strongly subsubcriticalcritical, yet scale-free instability. Treating the threshold for nonlinear instability as a nonlinear critical point, we explain the…