liquid crystal elastomer

Smart soft materials have gained increasing attention in recent years because of their adaptive behaviors to external multi-physics stimuli, enabling diverse applications across multiple fields. Here, we show programmable wrinkling morphological patterns on liquid crystal network (LCN) bilayers bonded to compliant substrates under thermal load, by tuning the orientation of directors between LCN bilayers. We propose a solid-shell formulation that merges enhanced and natural assumed strain approaches to investigate the pattern formation and morphological transition of LCN bilayers.

Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs), as a unique class of smart soft materials combining the properties of liquid crystals and hyperelasticity, are capable of rapid, anisotropic, and reversible deformations in response to mechanical, thermal or optical stimuli. Here, we report a hitherto unknown stretching-induced twisting behavior of LCE bilayer strips. Under uniaxial stretching, we reveal that due to the spontaneous mismatch strain arising from interlayer anisotropy, the bilayer strips exhibit notable twisting deformations.

Recent advances in liquid crystal elastomer

Zhijian Wang, Shengqiang Cai

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Materials Science and Engineering Program

UCSD

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to to draw your attention to the Symposium on **Soft Materials and Structures** to take place at the upcoming 49th Meeting of the Society of Engineering Sciences (SES) at GeorgiaTech, Atlanta, GA (October 10-12, 2011). More information can be found in the meeting's website: http://ses2012.org/