相关论文: Liquid Crystal Elastomer Strips as Soft Crawlers
Liquid Crystal Elastomers (LCEs) are an exciting category of material that has tremendous application potential across a variety of fields, owing to their unique properties that enable both sensing and actuation. To some, LCEs are simply…
Predicting the macroscopic mechanical behavior of polymeric materials from the micro-structural features has remained a challenge for decades. Existing theoretical models often fail to accurately capture the experimental data, due to…
Sliding friction between crystal lattices and the physics of cold ion traps are so far non-overlapping fields. Two sliding lattices may either stick and show static friction or slip with dynamic friction; cold ions are known to form static…
We present high resolution measurements of the displacement and strain fields near the tip of a dynamic (Mode I) crack. The experiments are performed on polyacrylamide gels, brittle elastomers whose fracture dynamics mirror those of typical…
The transition from static to dynamic friction when an elastic body is slid over another is now known to result from the motion of interface rupture fronts. These fronts may be either crack-like or pulse-like, with the latter involving…
An overview of computer simulations of tribology is presented. The chapter begins with a brief overview of simulation techniques and the special requirements for simulations of tribological processes. Then simple one-dimensional models of…
In recent years, soft robotics simulators have evolved to offer various functionalities, including the simulation of different material types (e.g., elastic, hyper-elastic) and actuation methods (e.g., pneumatic, cable-driven, servomotor).…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) containing light-sensitive molecules exhibit large reversible deformation when subjected to illumination. Here, we investigate the role of optical penetration depth on this photomechanical response. We…
A nematic liquid-crystal gel is a macroscopically homogeneous elastic medium with the rotational symmetry of a nematic liquid crystal. In this paper, we develop a general approach to the study of these gels that incorporates all underlying…
This article investigates the interaction of nematic liquid crystals modeled by a simplified Ericksen-Leslie model with a rigid body. It is shown that this problem is locally strongly well-posed, and that it also admits a unique, global…
We propose a mechanically simple and cheap design for a series elastic actuator with controllable stiffness. Such characteristics are necessary for animals for running, jumping, throwing, and manipulation, yet in robots, variable stiffness…
Nematic elastomers are rubbery solids which have liquid crystals incorporated into their polymer chains. These materials display many unusual mechanical properties, one such being the ability to form fine-scale microstructure. In this work,…
Dynamics of small particles, both living such as swimming bacteria and inanimate, such as colloidal spheres, has fascinated scientists for centuries. If one could learn how to control and streamline their chaotic motion, that would open…
We investigate the rapid spreading dynamics of a viscoelastic drop on a solid. Upon contact, surface tension drives a fast motion of the contact line along the substrate. Here, we resolve this motion for viscoelastic liquids by experiments…
In this paper, we study an elastic bilayer plate composed of a nematic liquid crystal elastomer in the top layer and a nonlinearly elastic material in the bottom layer. While the bottom layer is assumed to be stress-free in the flat…
Soft robots have been increasingly utilized as sophisticated tools in physical rehabilitation, particularly for assisting patients with neuromotor impairments. However, many soft robotics for rehabilitation applications are characterized by…
In a pioneer experiment, Bohlein et al. realized the controlled sliding of two-dimensional colloidal crystals over laser-generated periodic or quasi-periodic potentials. Here we present realistic simulations and arguments which besides…
Liquid crystal elastomers are rubbers with liquid crystal order. They contract along their nematic director when heated or illuminated. The shape changes are large and occur in a relatively narrow temperature interval, or at low…
The concept of a local linear elastic strain field is commonly used in the metallurgical research community to approximate the collective effect of atomic displacements around crystalline defects. Here we show that the elastic strain field…
We present a novel method to investigate the dynamics of a single semiflexible polymer, subject to anisotropic friction in a viscous fluid. In contrast to previous approaches, we do not rely on a discrete bead-rod model, but introduce a…