Related papers: Slow stress relaxation in randomly disordered nema…
We model polydomain liquid-crystal elastomers by extending the neo-classical soft and semi-soft free energies used successfully to describe monodomain samples. We show that there is a significant difference between polydomains cross-linked…
The dynamics of structural relaxation in a model polymer glass subject to spatially-homogeneous, time-periodic shear deformation is investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. We study a coarse-grained bead-spring model of short…
When liquid-crystalline elastomers pass through the isotropic-nematic transition, the orientational order parameter and the elastic strain vary rapidly but smoothly, without the expected first-order discontinuity. This broadening of the…
Properties of disordered nematic elastomers and gels are theoretically investigated with emphasis on the roles of non-local elastic interactions and crosslinking conditions. Networks originally crosslinked in the isotropic phase lose their…
We address the physics of nematic liquid crystalline elastomers randomly crosslinked in the isotropic state. To do this, we construct a phenomenological effective replica Hamiltonian in terms of two order-parameter fields: one for the…
When liquid-crystal elastomers are prepared without any alignment, disordered polydomain structures emerge as the materials are cooled into the nematic phase. These polydomain structures have been attributed to quenched disorder in the…
We study the low-frequency, long-wavelength dynamics of soft and semi-soft nematic elastomers using two different but related dynamic theories. Our first formulation describes the pure hydrodynamic behavior of nematic elastomers in which…
Stress relaxation following deformation of an entangled polymeric liquid is thought to be affected by transient reforming of chain entanglements. In this work, we use single molecule techniques to study the relaxation of individual polymers…
In liquid-crystalline elastomers, the nematic order parameter and the induced strain vary smoothly across the isotropic-nematic transition, without the expected first-order discontinuity. To investigate this smooth variation, we measure the…
Polydomain liquid crystalline (nematic) elastomers have highly unusual mechanical properties, dominated by the dramatically non-linear stress-strain response that reflects stress-induced evolution of domain patterns. Here, we study the…
Nematic elastomers with a locked-in anisotropy direction exhibit semi-soft elastic response characterized by a plateau in the stress-strain curve in which stress does not change with strain. We calculate the global phase diagram for a…
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…
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 propose a new framework to discuss the transition from exponential relaxation in a liquid to the regime of slow dynamics. For the purposes of stress relaxation, we show that a liquid can be treated as an elastic medium. We discuss that,…
We introduce a simple mean-field lattice model to describe the behavior of nematic elastomers. This model combines the Maier-Saupe-Zwanzig approach to liquid crystals and an extension to lattice systems of the Warner-Terentjev theory of…
A general kind of models with hierarchically constrained dynamics is shown to exhibit logarithmic anomalous relaxation, similarly to a variety of complex strongly interacting materials. The logarithmic behavior describes most of the decay…
We numerically investigate stress relaxation in soft athermal disks to reveal critical slowing down when the system approaches the jamming point. The exponents describing the divergence of the relaxation time differ dramatically depending…
We investigate Isotropic - Nematic transition in liquid crystal elastomers employing non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo techniques. We consider a lattice model of a liquid elastomer and Selinger-Jeon-Ratna Hamiltonian which accounts for…
The influence of an external flow on the relaxation dynamics of a single polymer is investigated theoretically and numerically. We show that a pronounced dynamical slowdown occurs in the vicinity of the coil-stretch transition, especially…
We present Monte Carlo simulations in a modification of the north-or-east-or-front model recently investigated by Berthier and Garrahan [J. Phys. Chem. B 109, 3578 (2005)]. In this coarse-grained model for relaxation in supercooled liquids,…