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Unexpected hardening effects in bilayered gel beams

  • Active Behavior in Soft Matter and Mechanobiology
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Abstract

A classical problem in structural mechanics is the evaluation of beam stretching and curvature in slender bilayered beams, due to mechanical actions, thermal distortions, differential growth, and more recently, to swelling. We investigate the non-monotonic changes in the curvature of swollen bilayer beams due to mismatches in physical properties of the two layers starting from a simple structural approach, and discuss the apparent contrast with the well-known Timoshenko’s formula through a scaling analysis. Due to the large strains involved in the problem, we also discuss the problem through a thermodynamics based on Gent model for the elastic contribution to the free-energy of the gels.

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Notes

  1. Actually, the representation form of the stress \(\sigma\) depends on the above cited incompressibility of the polymer as \(\sigma =G_s\lambda _{os} -\lambda _{os}^2\,p\) with \(G_s=Y_s/(2(1+\nu ))\) and assuming that for incompressible material \(\nu =1/2\) we get \(G_s=Y_s/3\).

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Acknowledgements

E.P. acknowledges the National Group of Mathematical Physics (GNFM-INdAM) for support (Young Researcher Project).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Strutturale e Geotecnica, Sapienza Università di Roma, via Eudossiana 18, 00184, Roma, Italy

    Paola Nardinocchi

  2. Dipartimento Politecnico di Ingegneria e Architettura, Università di Udine, via del Cotonificio 114, I-33100, Udine, Italy

    Eric Puntel

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Correspondence to Paola Nardinocchi.

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Nardinocchi, P., Puntel, E. Unexpected hardening effects in bilayered gel beams. Meccanica 52, 3471–3480 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11012-017-0635-z

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