Confined Cubic Blue Phases under Shear
Soft Condensed Matter
2017-11-27 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Computational Physics
Fluid Dynamics
Abstract
We study the behaviour of confined cubic blue phases under shear flow via lattice Boltzmann simulations. We focus on the two experimentally observed phases, blue phase I and blue phase II. The disinclination network of blue phase II continuously breaks and reforms under shear, leading to an oscillatory stress response in time. The oscillations are only regular for very thin samples. For thicker samples, the shear leads to a "stick-slip" motion of part of the network along the vorticity direction. Blue phase I responds very differently: its defect network undergoes seemingly chaotic rearrangements under shear, irrespective of system size.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1111.5441,
title = {Confined Cubic Blue Phases under Shear},
author = {O. Henrich and K. Stratford and D. Marenduzzo and P. V. Coveney and M. E. Cates},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1111.5441},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
10 pages, 5 figures, to be published in J. Phys. Condens. Matter (2012)