Mechanics and transient morphing of soft hygroscopic bilayers

Motivated by pine cones and plant seeds that open or close in response to changes humidity thanks the shrinking swelling of hygroscopic bilayers, given recent interest artificial systems mimic motility seeds, we consider bilayers consisting two adhering elongated thin layers made gels, modeled as active, transversally isotropic elastic materials. The direction transverse isotropy is set one fibers are present both biological synthetic As a special, biologically relevant case, passive. This work develops three-dimensional model for coupled evolution deformations moisture content (solvent concentration). Based on this model, numerical scheme solving equations coupling mechanical equilibrium diffusion has been constructed based Finite Element Method. formulated weak form solved using Comsol Multiphysics. We have applied our compute transient configurations their steady-state limits some test cases. These then analyzed understand influence various geometric physical parameters.