Exploring Liquid Crystal Elastomers: Shape-Morphing and Structural Instabilities
Liquid crystal elastomers are rubbery solids with liquid crystal mesogens incorporated into their main chains. They display an isotropic to nematic phase transformation accompanied by a large spontaneous deformation. This in turn leads to rich variety of phenomena including ultra-soft behavior, stripe domains, shape-morphing etc.
Further, when made as slender structures, the structural instability of slender structures and the material instabilities of liquid crystal elastomers combine and compete in interesting ways. Â This talk will provide an introduction to these materials, and provide examples from contemporary research about opportunities these materials present.
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Professor of Mechanics and Professor of Materials Science
Kaushik Bhattacharya is Howell N. Tyson, Sr., Professor of Mechanics and Professor of Materials Science as well as the Vice-Provost at the California Institute of Technology. He received his B.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India in 1986, his Ph.D from the University of Minnesota in 1991 and his post-doctoral training at the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences during 1991-1993. He joined Caltech in 1993. His research concerns the mechanical behavior of solids, and specifically uses theory to guide the development of new materials. His honors include von Kármán Medal of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Distinguished Alumni Award of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (2019), Outstanding Achievements Award from the University of Minnesota (2018), the Warner T. Koiter Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (2015) and Graduate Student Council Teaching and Mentoring Award at Caltech (2013). He served as editor of the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids from 2004-2015.
