Related papers: Properties of Liquid Crystalline Elastomer Foams
In the absence of coalescence, coarsening of emulsions (and foams) is controlled by molecular diffusion of dispersed phase between droplets/bubbles. Studies of dilute emulsions have shown how the osmotic pressure of a trapped species within…
Stimuli-responsive liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) with a strong coupling of orientational molecular order and rubber-like elasticity, show a great potential as working elements in soft robotics, sensing, transport and propulsion systems.…
A rectangular plate of dielectric elastomer exhibiting gradients of material properties through its thickness will deform inhomogeneously when a potential difference is applied to compliant electrodes on its major surfaces, because each…
Foaming metals modulates their physical properties, enabling attractive applications where lightweight, low thermal conductivity or acoustic isolation are desirable. Adjusting the size of the bubbles in the foams is particularly relevant…
Elastomers filled with liquid inclusions -- as opposed to conventional solid fillers -- are a recent trend in the soft matter community because of their unique range of mechanical and physical properties. Such properties stem, in part, from…
We investigate the deformation of elastic microcapsules adsorbed at liquid-liquid interfaces. An initially spherical elastic capsule at a liquid-liquid interface undergoes circumferential stretching due to the liquid-liquid surface tension…
A recent study has demonstrated that phase separation in binary liquid mixtures is arrested in the presence of elastic networks and can lead to a nearly uniformly-sized distribution of the dilute-phase droplets. At longer timescales, these…
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…
We consider a continuum model describing the dynamic behavior of nematic liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) and implement a numerical scheme to solve the governing equations. In the model, the Helmholtz free energy and Rayleigh dissipation…
Liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) are shape-changing materials that exhibit large deformations in response to applied stimuli. Local control of the orientation of LCEs spatially directs the deformation of these materials to realize…
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…
Under steady shear, a foam relaxes stress through intermittent rearrangements of bubbles accompanied by sudden drops in the stored elastic energy. We use a simple model of foam that incorporates both elasticity and dissipation to study the…
We model the behaviour of a single colloid embedded in a cross-linked polymer gel, immersed in a viscous background fluid. External fields actuate the particle into a periodic motion, which deforms the embedding matrix and creates a local…
Smart surfaces that reversibly change the interfacial friction coefficients in response to external stimuli enable a wide range of applications, such as grips, seals, brake pads, packaging films, and fabrics. Here a new concept of such a…
The addition of minute amounts of chemically inert polyacrylamide polymer to liquids results in large instabilities under steady electro-osmotic pumping through 2:1 constrictions, demonstrating that laminar flow conditions can be broken in…
Liquid foam exhibits surprisingly high viscosity, higher than each of its phases. This dissipation enhancement has been rationalized by invoking either a geometrical confinement of the shear in the liquid phase, or the influence of the…
In this paper, a fundamental understanding of the densification mechanics of polymeric syntactic foams under compressive loading is established. These syntactic foams are closed cell composite foams with thin-walled microballoons dispersed…
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…
Relaxation volume tensors quantify the effect of stress on diffusion of crystal defects. Continuum linear elasticity predicts that calculations of these parameters using periodic boundary conditions do not suffer from systematic deviations…
We study the elasto-plastic behaviour of materials made of individual (discrete) objects, such as a liquid foam made of bubbles. The evolution of positions and mutual arrangements of individual objects is taken into account through…