Journal of Physics: Conference Series | 2021
Modeling shape and volume transitions in liquid crystal elastomers
Abstract
Shape and volume phase transitions of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) immersed in a solvent are studied within the framework of the Finsler geometry (FG). In the FG model of an LCE, an internal variable is introduced to describe the directional degrees of freedom of liquid crystals. We also introduce an Ising-like variable to effectively describe the swelling behavior of the LCE. From the results of Monte Carlo simulations, we find that the model successfully reproduces changes in the swelling degree as well as the smooth change in the shape anisotropy with increasing temperature. Moreover, the maximal value of the shape anisotropy is close to the experimentally observed value.