Related papers: Deformation localisation in stretched liquid cryst…
In this paper, we study an elastic bilayer plate composed of a nematic liquid crystal elastomer in the top layer and a nonlinearly elastic material in the bottom layer. While the bottom layer is assumed to be stress-free in the flat…
We discuss instabilities of fluid films of nanoscale thickness, with a particular focus on films where the destabilising mechanism allows for linear instability, metastability, and absolute stability. Our study is motivated by nematic…
A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…
Topological defects are a ubiquitous phenomenon in diverse physical systems. In nematic liquid crystals (LCs), they are dynamic, physicochemically distinct, sensitive to stimuli, and are thereby promising for a range of applications.…
We investigate the finite bending and the associated bending instability of an incompressible dielectric slab subject to a combination of applied voltage and axial compression, using nonlinear electro-elasticity theory and its incremental…
In liquid crystal elastomers, the orientational order of liquid crystals is coupled with elastic distortions of crosslinked polymer networks. Previous theoretical research has described these materials through two different approaches: a…
The necking instability is a precursor to tensile failure and rupture of materials. A quasistatically loaded free-standing uniaxial specimen typically exhibits necking at a single location, corresponding to a long wavelength bifurcation…
Vertically aligned mono-domain nematic liquid crystal elastomers contract when heated. If a temperature gradient is applied across the width of such a cantilever, inhomogeneous strain distribution leads to bending motion. We modelled the…
Liquid Crystalline Elastomers (LCEs) are active materials that are of interest due to their programmable response to various external stimuli such as light and heat. When exposed to these stimuli, the anisotropy in the response of the…
Here we study theoretically the dynamics of a 2D and a 3D isotropic droplet in a nematic liquid crystal under a shear flow. We find a large repertoire of possible nonequilibrium steady states as a function of the shear rate and of the…
We investigate the stability of a circular electrodes-coated dielectric membrane under the combined action of an electric field and all-round in-plane tension. It is known that such a membrane is susceptible to the limiting point…
Addition of particles to a viscoelastic suspension dramatically alters the properties of the mixture, particularly when it is sheared or otherwise processed. Shear-induced stretching of the polymers results in elastic stress that causes a…
We derive the effective energy density of thin membranes of liquid crystal elastomers as the Gamma-limit of a widely used bulk model. These membranes can display fine-scale features both due to wrinkling that one expects in thin elastic…
A statistical theory of cholesteric liquid crystals composed of short rigid biaxial molecules is presented. It is derived in the thermodynamic limit at a small density and a small twist. The uniaxial (biaxial) cholesteric phase is regarded…
In this paper we present a dimensional reduction to obtain a one-dimensional model to analyze localized necking or bulging in a residually stressed circular cylindrical solid. The nonlinear theory of elasticity is first specialized to…
In this paper, we speculate on a possible application of Liquid Crystal Elastomers to the field of soft robotics. In particular, we study a concept for limbless locomotion that is amenable to miniaturisation. For this purpose, we formulate…
Orientational and positional ordering properties of liquid crystal monolayers are examined by means of Fundamental-Measure Density Functional Theory. Particles forming the monolayer are modeled as hard parallelepipeds of square section of…
We present molecular dynamics computer simulations of filaments of model non-Newtonian liquid stretched in a uniaxial deformation to the point of breaking. The liquid consists of Lennard-Jones monomers bound into chains of 100 monomers by…
We consider a one-dimensional variational problem arising in connection with a model for cholesteric liquid crystals. The principal feature of our study is the assumption that the twist deformation of the nematic director incurs much higher…
A two dimensional amorphous material is modeled as an assembly of mesoscopic elemental pieces coupled together to form an elastically coherent structure. Plasticity is introduced as the existence of different minima in the energy landscape…