Related papers: Nematic Films and Radially Anisotropic Delaunay Su…
We consider the effective pseudo-Casimir interaction forces mediated by a nematic liquid-crystalline film bounded by two planar surfaces, one of which imposes a random (disordered) distribution of the preferred anchoring axis in the…
Growing tissues are highly dynamic, flowing on sufficiently long time-scales due to cell proliferation, migration and tissue remodeling. As a consequence, living tissues can be approximated as liquids. This means the shape of microtissues…
Textures (i.e., smooth space non-uniform distributions of the order parameter) in biaxial nematics turned out to be much more difficult and interesting than expected. Scanning the literature we find only a very few publications on this…
Surface properties of mixtures of charged platelike colloids and salt in contact with a charged planar wall are studied within density functional theory. The particles are modeled by hard cuboids with their edges constrained to be parallel…
We investigate Faraday waves on a viscoelastic liquid. Onset measurements and a nonlinear phase diagram for the selected patterns are presented. By virtue of the elasticity of the material a surface resonance synchronous to the external…
We summarise some recent results on solution landscapes for two-dimensional (2D) problems in the Landau--de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals. We study energy-minimizing and non energy-minimizing solutions of the Euler--Lagrange…
Thin elastic sheets and membranes are known to wrinkle when they are stretched -- the associated physics is highly non-linear. The mechanics of thin films that exhibit unusual behavior upon stretching, when they possess auxetic structure,…
We have calculated the phase diagrams of one--component fluids made of five types of biaxial particles differing in their cross sections. The orientation of the principal particle axis is fixed in space, while the second axis is allowed to…
A theoretical analysis of surface fluctuations of a freely standing thermotropic smectic-A liquid crystal film is provided, including the effects of viscous hydrodynamics. We find two surface dynamic modes (undulation and peristaltic). For…
Disclination configurations of a nematic liquid crystal are studied within a self-consistent molecular field theory. The theory is based on a tensor order parameter, and can accommodate anisotropic elastic energies without the known…
We present a new finite deformation, dynamic finite element model that incorporates surface tension to capture elastocapillary effects on the electromechanical deformation of dielectric elastomers. We demonstrate the significant effect that…
We present a framework to take new measurements in nematic systems that contain active elements such as molecular motors. Spatio-temporal fields of stress, traction, velocity, pressure, and forces are estimated jointly from microscopy…
Solid-state dewetting (SSD), a widespread phenomenon in solid-solid-vapor system, could be used to describe the accumulation of solid thin films on the substrate. In this work, we consider the sharp interface model for axisymmetric SSD with…
Various aspects of axion electrodynamics in the presence of a homogeneous and isotropic dielectric medium are discussed. 1. We consider first the "antenna-like" property of a planar dielectric surface in axion electrodynamics, elaborating…
From incompressible flows to electrostatics, harmonic functions can provide solutions to many two-dimensional problems and, similarly, the director field of a planar nematic can be determined using complex analysis. We derive a closed-form…
In this thesis, we consider the thin-film equation with nonlinear surface tension term in one space dimension. Relying on the corresponding energy and entropy estimates, we prove existence of weak solutions as well as nonnegativity results.
This paper presents a detailed analysis of the three-dimensional stability properties of an annular liquid film coating a cylindrical fibre in the presence of van der Waals (vdW) interactions, whose influence depends on the wettability of…
We introduce a class of continuum mechanical models aimed at describing the behaviour of viscoelastic fluids by incorporating concepts originated in the theory of solid plasticity. Within this class, even a simple model with constant…
Compressive mechanical stress exceeding a critical value leads to the formation of periodic surface buckling patterns in film-substrate systems. A comprehensive understanding of this buckling phenomenon is desired in applications where the…
We develop new variational principles to study stability and equilibrium of axisymmetric flows. We show that there is an infinite number of steady state solutions. We show that these steady states maximize a (non-universal) $H$-function. We…