A network of polymers can imbibe a large quantity of a solvent and swell, resulting in a gel.  The swelling process can be markedly influenced by a mechanical load and geometric constraint.  When the network, solvent, and mechanical load equilibrate, the gel usually swells by a field of inhomogeneous and anisotropic deformation.  We show that this field in the swollen gel is equivalent to that in a hyperelastic solid.  We implement this theory in the finite-element package, ABAQUS, and analyze examples of swelling-induced deformation, contact, and bifurcation.  Because commercial software like ABAQUS is widely available, this work may provide a powerful tool to study complex phenomena in gels.

I'm attaching slides of a talk that I gave yesterday at the Schlumberger-Doll Research Center.  In preparing the talk, I made liberal use of slides prepared by Wei Hong for his own presentations.  The talk is mainly based on the following papers:

Before we start this issue of J-club, I would like to recommend Prof. Langer's lecture for his MRS Von Hippel Award in the 2005 MRS Fall Meeting (Langer, 2006). His lecture not only delineated the history of the new exciting field of drug delivery and controlled release, but also told us many interesting stories happened in his career development. With Prof. Langer's pioneer work, many new materials are developed for designing new drug delivery and controlled drug release systems.