Comment on “Director reorientation in nematic liquid-single-crystal elastomers by external mechanical stress"

Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HE, UK

Received: 25 July 1996
Accepted: 24 January 1997

Abstract

In a recent letter J. Weilepp and H.R. Brand have considered an orientational instability in nematic elastomers driven by an elastic stress. We point out that the authors chose incorrect physical mechanisms for the transition. We show that their threshold strain and the parameters of their characteristic modulated texture above the threshold are unphysical in their magnitudes and scaling.