查看文章

Liquid crystal elastomer is a kind of anisotropic polymeric material, with complicated micro-structures and thermo-order-mechanical coupling behaviors. In this paper, we propose a method to systematically model these coupling behaviors. We derive the constitutive model in full tensor structure according to the Clausius–Duhem inequality. Two of the constitutive equations represent the mechanical equilibrium and the other two represent the phase equilibrium. Choosing the total free energy as the combination of the neo-classical free energy and the Landau–de Gennes nematic free energy, we obtain the Cauchy stress–deformation gradient relation and the order–mechanical coupling equations. We find the analytical homogeneous solutions of the deformation for the typical mechanical loadings, such as uniaxial stretch, and simple shear in any directions. We also compare the compression behavior of prolate liquid …