Bridging from particle to macroscopic scales in uniaxial magnetic gels

Connecting the different length scales of characterization is an important, but often very tedious task for soft matter systems. Here, we carry out such a procedure for the theoretical description of anisotropic uniaxial magnetic gels. The so-far undetermined material parameters in a symmetrybased macroscopic hydrodynamic-like description are determined starting from a simplified mesoscopic particle-resolved model. This mesoscopic approach considers chain-like aggregates of magnetic particles embedded in an elastic matrix. Our procedure provides an illustrative background to the formal symmetry-based macroscopic description. There are presently other activities to connect such mesoscopic models as ours with more microscopic polymer-resolved approaches; together with these activities, our study complements a first attempt of scale-bridging from the microscopic to the macroscopic level in the characterization of magnetic gels. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.