Abstract
Nematic elastomer, consisting of mesogens and polymer network, has emerged as a promising material for constructing soft actuators and attracted much attention in recent years. In this paper, we conduct a systematic study of uniaxial tension of a nematic elastomer film with the loading direction forming different angles with respect to the mesogen alignment. We found that if the two ends of the film are clamped without allowing rotation during the stretch, inhomogeneous deformation in the specimen often occurs. However, if both ends of the film can freely rotate during the stretch, the film elongates and shears nearly homogeneously. Our theoretical predictions based on the free energy function of nematic elastomer agree well with experimental measurements of the elastomer undergoing homogeneous deformation with only two fitting parameters. The necking phenomena observed in nematic elastomer during the uniaxial tension have also been discussed.
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