Beschreibung:
<jats:p>Liquid crystal elastomers are attractive materials featuring promising applications in emerging technologies, but their structure–property relationship has yet to be thoroughly explored. Some mechanical properties of these materials are the focus of this article. Three tensile experiments of monodomain nematic liquid crystal elastomers have been theoretically analyzed using a free energy density expression describing mechanical and orientational deformations and their interaction. As a result, a theoretical relation is obtained that relates the quantities measured in experiments with the elasticity coefficients entering the expression of the free energy density. Five of these elasticity coefficients were estimated for monodomain nematic liquid crystal elastomers with different compositions using available experimental data from the literature.</jats:p>