Dielectric elastomers undergo large deformations in response to an electric field and consequently have attracted significant interest as electromechanical transducers. Applications of these materials include actuators capable of converting an applied electric field into mechanical motion and energy harvesting devices that convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. Numerically based desi...

VistamaxxTM Specialty Elastomers are polyolefin elastomers with isotactic propylene crystallinity. These polymers contain a predominant (>80%) amount of propylene with isotactic propylene crystallinity, with the balance of the composition being ethylene and other αolefins. This new family of thermoplastic elastomers are highly elastic and exhibit excellent recovery from deformation. These polym...

Nematic liquid-crystal (LC) elastomers and gels have a rubbery polymer network coupled to the nematic director. While LC elastomers show a single, non-hydrodynamic relaxation mode, dynamic light-scattering studies of self-assembled liquid-crystal gels reveal orientational fluctuations that relax over a broad time scale. At short times, the relaxation dynamics exhibit hydrodynamic behavior. In c...

We study the stability of magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) undergoing finite deformations in the presence of a magnetic field and derive a general condition for the onset of macroscopic instabilities. In particular, we focus on anisotropic MREs with magnetoactive particles that are aligned along a particular direction, forming chain-like structures. We idealize the microstructure of such an...

Submitted for the MAR09 Meeting of The American Physical Society A Microscopic Model for the Reinforcement and the Non Linear Behaviour of Filled Elastomers and Thermoplastic Elastomers (Payne and Mullins Effects) DIDIER LONG, CNRS/Rhodia, SAMY MERABIA1, CNRS/Univ. Paris Sud, PAUL SOTTA, CNRS/Rhodia — We present a model regarding reinforcement properties of nanostructured polymers. Then, we sho...

In this article, we construct and analyze models of anisotropic crosslinked polymers employing tools from the theories of nematic liquid crystals and liquid crystal elastomers. The anisotropy of these systems stems from the presence of rigid rod molecular units in the network. We construct energy functionals for compressible and incompressible elastomers as well as for rod-fluid networks. The t...

We study two aspects of the elasticity of smectic- A elastomers that make these materials genuinely and qualitatively different from conventional uniaxial rubbers. Under strain applied parallel to the layer normal, monodomain smectic- A elastomers exhibit a drastic change in Young's modulus above a threshold strain value of about 3%, as has been measured in experiments by [Nishikawa and Finkelm...

SUMMARY. New analytical and computational results on the static and dynamic response of ne-matic elastomers to applied electric fields and mechanical loads are reviewed, and compared with the available experimental evidence. 1 INTRODUCTION Nematic elastomers display a peculiar mechanical response arising from the interplay between the electro-optical properties of liquid crystals and the elasti...

This paper puts forth an approximate solution for the effective free-energy function describing the homogenized (or macroscopic) magnetoelastic response of magnetorheological elastomers comprised of non-Gaussian rubbers filled with isotropic suspensions of either iron or ferrofluid particles. The solution is general in that it applies to N = 2 and 3 space dimensions and any arbitrary (non-perco...

Self-healing polymers can address the damage susceptibility in soft robotics. However, most cases, their healing requires a heat stimulus, provided by an external device. This letter presents self-healing actuator with integrated healable flexible heater, functioning as stimuli-providing system. The is constructed out of thermoreversible elastomers that are crosslinked Diels-Alder (DA) reaction...