Stiffening solids with liquid inclusions

Sti ening solids with liquid inclusions

Nonlinear elastic inclusions in isotropic solids.

We introduce a geometric framework to calculate the residual stress fields and deformations of nonlinear solids with inclusions and eigenstrains. Inclusions are regions in a body with different reference configurations from the body itself and can be described by distributed eigenstrains. Geometrically, the eigenstrains define a Riemannian 3-manifold in which the body is stress-free by construc...

Dynamic Self-Stiffening in Liquid Crystal Elastomers

Biological tissues have the remarkable ability to remodel and repair in response to disease, injury and mechanical stresses. Synthetic materials lack the complexity of biological tissues, and man-made materials that respond to external stresses through a permanent increase in stiffness are uncommon. Here we report that polydomain nematic liquid crystal elastomers increase in stiffness by up to ...

Ginzburg-landau Model of a Liquid Crystal with Random Inclusions

Abstract. We consider a Ginzburg–Landau 3D functional with a surface energy term to model a nematic liquid crystal with inclusions. The locations and radii of the inclusions are randomly distributed and described by a set of finite dimensional distribution functions. We show that the presence of inclusions can be accounted for by an effective potential. Our main objectives are: (a) to derive th...

Dielectric Elastomers through Liquid-Metal Inclusions

Dr. M. D. Bartlett, Dr. A. Fassler, Prof. C. Majidi Soft Machines Lab Department of Mechanical Engineering Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh , PA 15213 , USA E-mail: [email protected] N. Kazem Soft Machines Lab Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh , PA 15213 , USA E. J. Markvicka Soft Machines Lab The Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon...