A numerical study of stretched smectic-A elastomer sheets

TL;DR

This paper uses finite element simulations to study how smectic-A elastomer sheets deform and buckle under stretching, revealing microstructure patterns and phase behaviors that align with experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a coarse-grained energy model that captures layer buckling and post-buckling behavior in smectic-A elastomers during stretching.

Findings

Bi-directional buckling dominates when stretched parallel to layers.

Microstructure phase depends on aspect ratio and stretching angle.

Model reproduces experimentally observed Poisson's ratios post-buckling.

Abstract

We present a numerical study of stretching monodomain smectic-A elastomer sheets, computed using the finite element method. When stretched parallel to the layer normal the microscopic layers in smectic elastomers are unstable to a transition to a buckled state. We account for the layer buckling by replacing the microscopic energy with a coarse grained effective free energy that accounts for the fine scale deformation of the layers. We augment this model with a term to describe the energy of deforming buckled layers, which is necessary to reproduce the experimentally observed Poisson's ratios post-buckling. We examine the spatial distribution of the microstructure phases for various stretching angles relative to the layer normal, and for different length-to-width aspect ratios. When stretching parallel to the layer normal the majority of the sample forms a bi-directionally buckled microstructure, except at the clamps where uni-directional microstructure is predicted. When stretching at small inclinations to the layer normal the phase of the sample is sensitive to the aspect ratio of the sample, with the bi-directionally buckled phase persistent to large angles only for small aspect ratios. We relate these theoretical results to experiments on smectic-A elastomers.