Large deformation analysis of spontaneous twist and contraction in nematic elastomer fibres with helical director

TL;DR

This paper develops an exact large-deformation elastic model for nematic elastomer fibres with helical director patterns, revealing spontaneous twisting and contraction behaviors, and demonstrates their potential for soft-tendon-like actuators.

Contribution

It introduces a novel large-deformation analytical solution for active elastomer fibres with helical director fields, linking spontaneous twist and contraction to fabrication parameters.

Findings

Spontaneous warping and twisting occur in active fibres under twist and stretch.

Maximum actuation twist is achieved with an optimal pre-twist during fabrication.

Twisting fibres can coil into spring-like shapes, enabling soft-tendon-like actuation.

Abstract

A cylindrical rubber fibre subject to twist will also elongate: a manifestation of Poynting's effect in large strain elasticity. Here, we construct an analogous treatment for an active rubber fibre actuated via an axisymmetric pattern of spontaneous distortion. We start by constructing an exact large-deformation solution to the equations of elasticity for such fibre subject to imposed twist and stretch, which reveals spontaneous warping and twisting of the fibre cross-section absent in passive rubbers. We then compute the corresponding non-linear elastic energy, which encompasses the Poynting effect, but is minimized by a finite spontaneous twist and stretch. In the second half of the paper, we apply these results to understand the twist-contraction actuation of nematic elastomer fibres fabricated with director-fields that encode helical patterns of contraction on heating. We first consider patterns making a constant angle with respect to the local cylindrical coordinate system (conical spiral director curves) and verify the predicted spontaneous twist, contraction and cross-section deformation via finite elements. Secondly, we consider realistic director distributions for the experimentally reported fibres fabricated by cross-linking while simultaneously applying stretch and twist. Counter-intuitively, we find that maximum actuation twist is produced by applying a finite optimal twist during fabrication. Finally, we illustrate that spontaneously twisting fibres will coil into spring-like shapes on actuation if the ends are prevented from twisting relative to each other. Such twist-torsion coupling would allow to make a tendril-like "soft-spring" actuator with low force and high linear stroke compared to the intrinsic contraction of the elastomer itself.