Stimuli-responsive twist actuators made from soft elastic composite materials -- linking mesoscopic and macroscopic descriptions
arXiv:2105.05628 · doi:10.1063/5.0043911
Abstract
Very recently, the construction of twist actuators from magnetorheological gels and elastomers has been suggested. These materials consist of magnetizable colloidal particles embedded in a soft elastic polymeric environment. The twist actuation is enabled by a net chirality of the internal particle arrangement. Upon magnetization by a homogeneous external magnetic field, the systems feature an overall torsional deformation around the magnetization direction. Starting from a discrete minimal mesoscopic model set-up we work towards a macroscopic characterization. The two scales are linked by identifying expressions for the macroscopic system parameters as functions of the mesoscopic model parameters. In this way, the observed behavior of a macroscopic system can in principle be mapped to and illustratively be understood from an appropriate mesoscopic picture. Our results apply equally well to corresponding soft electrorheological gels and elastomers.
14 pages, 5 figures
References in corpus (7)
- Tuned, driven, and active soft matter
- Magneto-sensitive elastomers in a homogeneous magnetic field: a regular rectangular lattice model
- Measuring the deformation of a ferrogel sphere in a homogeneous magnetic field
- Structural control of elastic moduli in ferrogels and the importance of non-affine deformations
- Forces on rigid inclusions in elastic media and resulting matrix-mediated interactions
- Bridging from particle to macroscopic scales in uniaxial magnetic gels
- Magnetostriction in magnetic gels and elastomers as a function of the internal structure and particle distribution