Resistive Heating of a Shape Memory Composite: Analytical, Numerical and Experimental Study

This work investigates in detail the Joule resistive heating phenomenon of electroactive Shape Memory Composites (SMC) when an electric current is injected at constant power. The SMC is a covalent poly(ε-caprolactone) network filled with 3 wt% of multiwall carbon nanotubes. The resistive heating of the SMC is studied by means of surface temperature measurements, analytical formulas and a coupled 3D thermo-electric numerical model. Analytical expressions are derived for the 2D temperature distribution within a parallelepipedic SMC, either with constant or linearly-dependent electrical resistivity. These analytical expressions can be used to investigate the influence of geometrical and material parameters in the steady-state temperature and its distribution across the sample. The results also allow one to identify the parameters that are crucial for predicting the temperature rise due to resistive heating: the temperature dependence of the resistivity has little effect on the steady-state temperature, whereas the thermal conductivity plays a significant role. The time-dependent temperature is shown to be related to the particular temperature dependence of heat capacity. Furthermore, the presence of external objects (clamps or grips) used during the shape memory cycle must be taken into consideration for a certain temperature to be reached since they result in a lower steady-state temperature and a slower resistive heating phenomenon. With the findings presented in this work, accurate resistive heating can be predicted for a SMC upon the injection of an electric current at constant power.

Hydrodynamic magneto-transport in holographic charge density wave states

We employ hydrodynamics and gauge/gravity to study magneto-transport in phases of matter where translations are broken (pseudo-)spontaneously. First we provide a hydrodynamic description of systems where translations are broken homogeneously at nonzero lattice pressure and magnetic field. This allows us to determine analytic expressions for all the relevant transport coefficients. Next we construct holographic models of those phases and determine all the DC conductivities in terms of the dual black hole geometry. Combining the hydrodynamic and holographic descriptions we obtain analytic expression for the AC thermo-electric correlators. These are fixed in terms of the black hole geometry and a pinning frequency we determine numerically. We find an excellent agreement between our hydrodynamic and holographic descriptions and show that the holographic models are good avatars for the study of magneto-phonons.