  A micrometer-scale elastic shell immersed in a nematic liquid crystal may be
deformed by the host if the cost of deformation is comparable to the cost of
elastic deformation of the nematic. Moreover, such inclusions interact and form
chains due to quadrupolar distortions induced in the host. A continuum theory
model using finite elements is developed for this system, using mesh
regularization and dynamic refinement to ensure quality of the numerical
representation even for large deformations. From this model, we determine the
influence of the shell elasticity, nematic elasticity and anchoring condition
on the shape of the shell and hence extract parameter values from an
experimental realization. Extending the model to multi-body interactions, we
predict the alignment angle of the chain with respect to the host nematic as a
function of aspect ratio, which is found to be in excellent agreement with
experiments and greatly improves upon previous theoretical predictions.
