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An electro‐elastic phase‐field model for nematic liquid crystal elastomers based on Landau‐de‐Gennes theory
Author(s) -
Keip MarcAndré,
Nadgir Omkar
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
gamm‐mitteilungen
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.239
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1522-2608
pISSN - 0936-7195
DOI - 10.1002/gamm.201720003
Subject(s) - liquid crystal , ansatz , elastomer , condensed matter physics , isotropy , biaxial nematic , materials science , phase (matter) , phase transition , landau theory , field (mathematics) , elasticity (physics) , physics , optics , mathematics , composite material , quantum mechanics , pure mathematics
The present contribution proposes a continuum‐mechanical phase‐field approach to model the electro‐elastic behavior of nematic liquid crystal elastomers. The nemato‐electro‐elastic model is embedded into the fundamental Landau‐de‐Gennes theory for isotropic–nematic phase transition and employs a tensorial order parameter as the phase field. Nematic deformations are incorporated through a constitutive ansatz in terms of the order parameter. The phase‐field formulation is implemented into the finite element method, so that the microstructure evolution of nematic elastomers under different boundary conditions can be studied. We show that the model is capable to capture characteristic features of nematic elastomers including mechanically and electrically induced microstructure evolution as well as the occurrence of stripe domains.