Related papers: Untwisting of a Strained Cholesteric Elastomer by …
We investigate the statistical mechanics of a torsionally constrained polymer. The polymer is modeled as a fluctuating rod with bend stiffness A kT and twist stiffness C kT. In such a model, thermal bend fluctuations couple geometrically to…
We present a method for solving the Worm Like Chain (WLC) model for twisting semiflexible polymers to any desired accuracy. We show that the WLC free energy is a periodic function of the applied twist with period 4 pi. We develop an analogy…
We present a numerical study of stretching monodomain smectic-A elastomer sheets, computed using the finite element method. When stretched parallel to the layer normal the microscopic layers in smectic elastomers are unstable to a…
We report measurements of the cholesteric pitch and twist elastic constant $(K_{22})$ in monodisperse suspensions of the rod-like virus filamentous bacteriophage {\it fd}. Measurements were taken for concentrations spanning the entire…
We investigate the elastic energy stored in a filament pair as a function of applied twist by measuring torque under prescribed end-to-end separation conditions. We show that the torque increases rapidly to a peak with applied twist when…
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…
We study the non-monotonic force-extension behaviour of helical ribbons using a new model for inextensible elastic strips. Unlike previous rod models our model predicts hysteresis behaviour for low-pitch ribbons of arbitrary material…
Mesogenic dimers in the twist-bend nematic phase exhibit much higher flexoelectric polarization than in their uniform nematic phase. In order to theoretically investigate this data, we extend the symmetry based linear elastic theory of the…
Statistical mechanics is an important tool for understanding polymer electroelasticity because the elasticity of polymers is primarily due to entropy. However, a common approach for the statistical mechanics of polymer chains, the Gaussian…
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,…
The problem of the detachment of a sufficiently large flat indenter from a plane adhesive viscoelastic strip of thickness "b" is studied. For any given retraction speed, three different detachment regimes are found: (i) for very small "b"…
Under compressive stress, rock ``damage'' in the form of tensile microcracks is coupled to internal slip on microscopic interfaces, such as preexisting cracks and grain boundaries. In order to characterise the contribution of slip to the…
We consider the axial compression of a thin sheet wrapped around a rigid cylindrical substrate. In contrast to the wrinkling-to-fold transitions exhibited in similar systems, we find that the sheet always buckles into a single symmetric…
We present a numerical Monte Carlo analysis of a continuos spin Ising chain that can describe the statistical proterties of folded proteins. We find that depending on the value of the Metropolis temperature, the model displays the three…
We study numerically the energetics and atomic mechanisms of misfit dislocation nucleation and stress relaxation in a two-dimensional atomistic model of strained epitaxial layers on a substrate with lattice misfit. Relaxation processes from…
Elastocaloric cooling has been identified as a promising alternative to high global warming potential vapor compression cooling. Two key bottlenecks to adoption are the need for bulky/expensive actuators to provide sufficient uniaxial…
We compute the relaxation of the total energy related to a variational model for nematic elastomers, involving a nonlinear elastic mechanical energy depending on the orientation of the molecules of the nematic elastomer, and a nematic…
We develop an energy-landscape based elasto-plastic model to understand the behaviour of amorphous solids under uniform and cyclic shear. Amorphous solids are modeled as being composed of mesoscopic sub-volumes, each of which may occupy…
We investigate the formation of helical multifilament bundles and the torque required to achieve them as a function of applied twist. Hyperelastic filaments with circular cross sections are mounted parallel in a uniform circle onto…
We describe the basic properties and consequences of introducing active stresses, with principal direction along the local director, in cholesteric liquid crystals. The helical ground state is found to be linearly unstable to extensile…