Transient analysis of swelling-induced large deformations in polymer gels

The purpose of the research is to describe the swelling-induced large deformations in polymer gels: a theoretical model is developed, and then implemented and solved using the finite element method. The model is firstly assessed with two well-known benchmark problems; moreover, the proposed approach is benchmarked against a recent experiment involving localized exposure of the gel boundary to a solvent, where large bending deformations appear during solvent absorption. In both cases, our results are quite satisfying. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.