Related papers: Dynamic Soft Elasticity in Monodomain Nematic Elas…
We report a dynamical-mechanical study of stress relaxation at small deformation in a natural (polyisoprene) rubber well above its glass transition temperature Tg. We find that an almost complete relaxation of stress takes place over very…
We show that in monomeric supercooled liquids and glasses that are plastically flowing at a constant shear stress $\sigma$ while being deformed with strain rate $\dot{\epsilon}$, the microscopic structural relaxation time $\tau_{\rm str}$…
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…
Using molecular dynamics simulation of a polymer glass model we investigate free-standing polymer films focusing on the in-plane shear modulus $\mu$ and the corresponding shear-stress relaxation modulus $G(t)$ as functions of temperature…
We perform exact Statistical Mechanics calculations for a system of elongated objects (hard needles) that are restricted to translate along a line and rotate within a plane, and that interact via both excluded-volume steric repulsion and…
We report a molecular dynamics (MD) study of the collective dynamics of a simple monatomic liquid -interacting through a two body potential that mimics that of lithium- across the liquid-glass transition. In the glassy phase we find…
The macroscopic shape of liquid crystalline elastomers strongly depends on the order parameter of the mesogenic groups. This order can be manipulated if photoisomerisable groups, e.g. containing N=N bonds, are introduced into the material.…
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 monodomain (single-crystal) nematic elastomer materials, all side-chain siloxane polymers with the same mesogenic groups and crosslinking density, but differing in the type of crosslinking. Increasing the proportion of long…
Experimentally it is possible to manipulate the director in a (chiral) smectic-$A$ elastomer using an electric field. This suggests that the director is not necessarily locked to the layer normal, as described in earlier papers that…
In an earlier preprint (V. V. Ginzburg, O. V. Gendelman, R. Casalini, and A. Zaccone, arxiv:2409.17291), we demonstrated that the dynamic (relaxation time) and volume equations of state for many amorphous polymers are near-universal -- each…
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…
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…
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…
Single crystal nematic elastomers undergo a transition from a strongly ordered phase N to an "isotropic" phase I. We show that: (a) samples produced under tension by the Finkelmann procedure are intrinsically anisotropic and should show a…
We study the flow behaviour of a twist-bend nematic $(N_{TB})$ liquid crystal. It shows three distinct shear stress ($\sigma$) responses in a certain range of temperatures and shear rates ($\dot{\gamma}$). In Region-I,…
Describing the dynamics and thermodynamics of amorphous materials near the glass transition is a major challenge in soft-matter physics and polymer engineering. Here, we show that the dependence of the dielectric alpha-relaxation time on…
In the context of finite elasticity, we propose plate models describing the spontaneous bending of nematic elastomer thin films due to variations along the thickness of the nematic order parameters. Reduced energy functionals are deduced…
We examine the structural relaxation of glassy materials at finite temperatures, considering the effect of activated rearrangements and long-range elastic interactions. Our three-dimensional mesoscopic relaxation model shows how the…
We performed parallel measurements of heat effects and shear modulus relaxation for glassy Te$_{75}$Ge$_{15}$Ga$_{10}$ taken as a representative of practically important non-metallic glasses with covalent bonding. It is shown that the heat…