Elastoswellability: Will it bend or will it crease?
Anupam Pandey (Virginia Tech), Douglas Holmes (Virginia Tech)
Soft Materials and Structures
Tue 4:20 - 5:40
Barus-Holley 158
Swelling-induced deformations are prevalent in natural and industrial environments. The dynamics of fluid movement within elastic networks and its interplay with structure’s geometry play an important role in morphology of growing tissues, curling of leaves, and delamination of thin films. According to the theory of poroelasticity, the steady permeation of fluid through crosslinked elastic network is diffusive in nature. Structural confinement, material geometry, and non-homogeneous exposure to fluid add more complications to swelling induced deformations of soft mechanical structures. In this talk we will discuss an experimental study of a transition between global structural bending and surface creasing in elastomer beams swollen non-homogeneously. We demonstrate that this transition is dictated by structure’s geometry, type of fluid and its volume. Competition between the structure’s bending energy and the swelling energy imparted onto it by the fluid droplet gives rise to an ‘elastoswelling’ lengthscale. This lengthscale predicts whether a given droplet volume of a particular fluid is able to bend an elastomer beam macroscopically or microscopically.