Tension and Rupture Dynamics of Freely-Suspended Bent-Core Liquid Crystalline Fibers

Euler buckling, a physical mechanism which classically describes deformations in an elastic beam, has been expanded to describe the recoil of viscoelastic liquid crystalline filaments. Rupture of the freely suspended filaments resulted in a buckling instability that propagated through the filament. A characteristic wavelength and a time constant emerge as the filament recoils. Tensions of the suspended filaments were measured by induced mechanical deflection. The analysis of the results reveals a temperature dependent competition between surface and bulk effects that distinguishes these viscoelastic filaments from classical elastic beams.