Sonderforschungsbereich 481

Relative rotations between the coupled subsystems of a complex material can become crucial in continuum modeling. In this paper the authors focus on the macroscopic description of side-chain liquid crystalline elastomers, where relative rotations between the polymer network and the director orientation associated with the liquid crystalline component are decisive. They extend the known expression for relative rotations to the nonlinear regime, within the framework of a continuum characterization of the materials. This allows the investigation of qualitatively different nonlinear effects determined by relative rotations, and they give an illustrative example. The formalism can easily be transferred to the macroscopic description of magnetic gels and will certainly be helpful in the characterization of other complex systems.