Related papers: Deformation localisation in stretched liquid cryst…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked polymer networks covalently bonded with liquid crystal mesogens. In the nematic phase, due to strong coupling between mechanical strain and orientational order, these materials display…
Stability is an important and fruitful avenue of research for liquid crystal elastomers. At constant temperature, upon stretching, the homogeneous state of a nematic body becomes unstable, and alternating shear stripes develop at very low…
Modeling liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) at the molecular level is crucial for the predictable design of energy-conversion and stimuli-responsive materials. Here, we develop a self-consistent field theory for LCEs which captures the…
We use the shear transformation zone (STZ) theory of dynamic plasticity to study the necking instability in a two-dimensional strip of amorphous solid. Our Eulerian description of large-scale deformation allows us to follow the instability…
For monodomain nematic elastomers, we construct generalised elastic-nematic constitutive models combining purely elastic and neoclassical-type strain-energy densities. Inspired by recent developments in stochastic elasticity, we extend…
Instabilities in thin elastic sheets, such as wrinkles, are of broad interest both from a fundamental viewpoint and also because of their potential for engineering applications. Nematic liquid crystal elastomers offer a new form of control…
Necking instabilities, in which tensile (extensional) deformation localizes into a small spatial region, are generic failure modes in elasto-viscoplastic materials. Materials in this very broad class --- including amorphous, crystalline,…
Wrinkles commonly develop in a thin film deposited on a soft elastomer substrate when the film is subject to compression. Motivated by recent experiments [Agrawal et al., Soft Matter 8, 7138 (2012)] that show how wrinkle morphology can be…
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…
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…
We study the linear instability with respect to necking of a filament of polymeric fluid undergoing uniaxial extension. Contrary to the widely discussed Considere criterion, we find the onset of instability to relate closely to the onset of…
We study stability and distortions of liquid crystal nematic order in a cell with a random heterogeneous substrate. Modeling this system as a bulk xy model with quenched disorder confined to a surface, we find that nematic order is…
Liquid crystal elastomers represent a novel class of programmable shape-transforming materials whose shape change trajectory is encoded in the material's nematic director field. Using three-dimensional nonlinear finite element…
The nonlinear elastic properties of nematic liquid crystals have acquired new interest with the recent experimental observation of bulk modulated nematic phases which are composed by achiral molecules. We extend the Oseen-Zocher-Frank's…
Electro-hydrodynamic phenomena in liquid crystals constitute an old but still very active research area. The reason is that these phenomena play the key role in various applications of liquid crystals and due to the general interest of…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked elastomer networks with liquid crystal mesogens incorporated into the main or side chain. Polydomain liquid crystalline (nematic) elastomers exhibit unusual mechanical properties like soft…
We study the necking of a filament of complex fluid or soft solid subject to uniaxial tensile stretching, under conditions of constant imposed stress and force, by means of linear stability analysis and nonlinear simulations. We demonstrate…
In this paper, the two-dimensional pure bending of a hyperelastic substrate coated by a nematic liquid crystal elastomer (abbreviated as NLCE) is studied within the framework of nonlinear elasticity. The governing system, arising from the…
Liquid crystal elastomers realize a fascinating new form of soft matter that is a composite of a conventional crosslinked polymer gel (rubber) and a liquid crystal. These {\em solid} liquid crystal amalgams, quite similarly to their…
The phase-ordering kinetics of a bulk uniaxial nematic liquid crystal is addressed using techniques that have been successfully applied to describe ordering in the O(n) model. The method involves constructing an appropriate mapping between…