Inhomogeneous large deformation study of temperature-sensitive hydrogel

In this paper, inhomogeneous deformation of a temperature-sensitive hydrogel has been studied and analyzed under arbitrary geometric and boundary conditions. We present the governing equations and equilibrium conditions of an isothermal process based on the monophase gel field theory of hydrogel via a variational approach. We have adopted and implemented an explicit form of energy for temperature-sensitive hydrogel in a three-dimensional finite element method (FEM) using a user-supply subroutine in ABAQUS. For verification purpose, a few numerical results obtained by the proposed approach are compared with existing experimental data and analytical solutions. They are all in good agreement. We also provide several examples to show the possible applications of the proposed method to explain various complex phenomena, including the bifurcation, buckling of membrane, buckling of thin film on compliant substrate and the opening and closure of flowers. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.