Self-sustained chaotic movement of electrothermal responsive liquid crystal elastomer pendulum

Abstract

Self-sustained movement has the ability to absorb energy from the external environment to maintain its own movement. In the present work, a self-sustained chaotic simple pendulum system featuring an electrothermal responsive liquid crystal elastomers fiber and a mass ball is proposed and examined. The power-on state is achieved in the system through the infusion of liquid metal into this fiber. Which enables the fiber to shrink, feeding energy into the system to compensate for the energy dissipation resulting from damping, thus allowing the system to maintain its self-sustained movement. On the basis of the existing dynamic liquid crystal elastomer model, the dynamic governing equations are established, and the movement behavior of the system under electrothermal stimulation is theoretically explored. Numerical findings suggest that the simple pendulum system presents three different movement patterns, namely stationary pattern, self-sustained oscillatory pattern, and self-sustained chaotic pattern. Moreover, five system parameters of elastic coefficient, viscosity coefficient, gravitational acceleration, shrinkage coefficient and electrothermal strength are examined. The present work can contribute to a better understanding of self-sustained chaotic systems driven by electrothermal responsive materials and offer guidance for further exploration of applications such as chaos machine, and mind-brain chaos analysis.