0000000001156290
AUTHOR
Heidrun Schüring
showing 1 related works from this author
Elastic Properties of Liquid Crystal Elastomer Balloons
2001
We introduce a method to measure elastic properties of smectic liquid crystalline elastomers. Freely suspended smectic polymer films containing photoreactive groups are inflated to spherical bubbles and crosslinked by UV light irradiation. After crosslinking, the balloon volume is varied and elastic properties of the material are determined from the relation between radius and inner excess pressure. The influence of the network topology on the elastic behaviour is discussed.