Physics – Condensed Matter – Soft Condensed Matter
Scientific paper
2008-03-06
Phys. Rev. E 78, 011703 (2008)
Physics
Condensed Matter
Soft Condensed Matter
11 figures, 9 pages, 1 appendix
Scientific paper
10.1103/PhysRevE.78.011703
Experimentally it is possible to manipulate the director in a (chiral) smectic-$A$ elastomer using an electric field. This suggests that the director is not necessarily locked to the layer normal, as described in earlier papers that extended rubber elasticity theory to smectics. Here, we consider the case that the director is weakly anchored to the layer normal assuming that there is a free energy penalty associated with relative tilt between the two. We use a recently developed weak-anchoring generalization of rubber elastic approaches to smectic elastomers and study shearing in the plane of the layers, stretching in the plane of the layers, and compression and elongation parallel to the layer normal. We calculate, inter alia, the engineering stress and the tilt angle between director and layer normal as functions of the applied deformation. For the latter three deformations, our results predict the existence of an instability towards the development of shear accompanied by smectic-$C$-like order.
Adams James M.
Lubensky Tom. C.
Stenull Olaf
Warner Marc
No associations
LandOfFree
Smectic-$A$ elastomers with weak director anchoring does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Smectic-$A$ elastomers with weak director anchoring, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Smectic-$A$ elastomers with weak director anchoring will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-13709