Thermal snap-through buckling of active bilayer arches under non-uniform longitudinal temperature distribution

Arches have been utilized in structural applications for thousands of years. However, investigation of arches that purposefully move under an environmental stimulus is a more recent pursuit. Surprisingly, there are limited examples in the literature exploring analytical and semi-analytical results for the snap-through of bilayer arches under non-uniform temperature distributions along the length of the arch. An area of particular interest is the combination of hard and soft layers, with the soft layers being in the form of responsive materials like aligned liquid crystal elastomers. In this work we present approximate semi-analytical results for the equilibrium of deformed bilayer arches under non-uniform, longitudinal temperature distributions. We will comment on the conditions in which the approximate results hold and potential future work, including experimental validation. This work has implications for sensors, actuators, and locomotion, especially under non-uniform environmental conditions.