相关论文: Liquid Crystal Elastomer Strips as Soft Crawlers

A thermodynamically related model is developed for describing elastic rubber-like behavior of amorphous and crystallizing polymers and demonstrated on example of simple extension. Both the “entropic” and “energetic”…

Miniature locomotion robots with the ability to navigate confined environments show great promise for a wide range of tasks, including search and rescue operations. Soft miniature locomotion robots, as a burgeoning field, have attracted…

Frictional properties of contacts between a smooth viscoelastic rubber and rigid surfaces are investigated using a torsional contact configuration where a glass lens is continuously rotated on the rubber surface. From the inversion of the…

This paper presents the derivation of the homogenized equations that describe the macroscopic mechanical response of elastomers filled with liquid inclusions in the setting of small quasistatic deformations. The derivation is carried out…

The gaits of undulating animals arise from a complex interaction of their central nervous system, muscle, connective tissue, bone, and environment. As a simplifying assumption, many previous studies have often assumed that sufficient…

This paper presents a new method for modelling the dynamic behaviour of developable ribbons, two dimensional strips with much smaller width than length. Instead of approximating such surface with a general triangle mesh, we characterize it…

Elastomers are artificial polymeric materials created for industrial and commercial applications. Depending on their purpose, they are performing in different species and structure modifications. Our studies focus on the systems of…

There is a growing interest in producing materials with mechanical behaviours similar to those of internal organs. An artificial tissue may be expected to experience several types of compressive and shear deformation in the course of normal…

Liquid-crystal networks consist of weakly crosslinked polymers that are coupled to liquid-crystal molecules. The resultant hybrid system has rich elastic properties. We develop a phase field model to describe mechanical properties of a…

In the sliding contact of elastomer on a rigid substrate, the coefficient of friction may depend on a large number of system and loading parameters, including normal force, sliding velocity, shape of contacting bodies, surface roughness and…

This paper presents an interaction control algorithm for a dielectric elastomer membrane actuator. The proposed method permits efficient exploitation of the controllable stiffness of the material, allowing to use the membrane as a…

We explore the locomotion of soft robots in granular medium (GM) resulting from the elastic deformation of slender rods. A low-cost, rapidly fabricable robot inspired by the physiological structure of bacteria is presented. It consists of a…

We present a theory for the low-frequency, long-wavelength dynamics of soft smectic-C elastomers with locked-in smectic layers. Our theory, which goes beyond pure hydrodynamics, predicts a dynamic soft elasticity of these elastomers and…

We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…

We provide a quantitative description of the helicoid--to--spiral transition in thin ribbons of nematic elastomers using an elementary calculation based on a Koiter-type plate with incompatible reference configuration. Our calculation…

Designing soft robots poses considerable challenges: automated design approaches may be particularly appealing in this field, as they promise to optimize complex multi-material machines with very little or no human intervention.…

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…

Due to elastic anisotropy, two-dimensional patterning of substrates can promote weak azimuthal alignment of adjacent nematic liquid crystals. Here, we consider how such alignment can be achieved using a periodic square lattice of circular…

We investigate a number of complex patterns driven by the electro-convection instability in a planarly aligned layer of a nematic liquid crystal. They are traced back to various secondary instabilities of the ideal roll patterns bifurcating…

Elastic wave propagation is intrinsically sensitive to the mechanical properties of the medium through which it travels. In soft elastomers, this makes guided elastic waves natural probes of viscoelastic and acoustoelastic behavior over a…