Related papers: Scratching a 50-year itch with elongated rods
This chapter is about the modeling of nematic liquid crystals (LCs) and their numerical simulation. We begin with an overview of the basic physics of LCs and discuss some of their many applications. Next, we delve into the modeling…
The phase-field-crystal model for liquid crystals is solved numerically in two spatial dimensions. This model is formulated with three position-dependent order parameters, namely the reduced translational density, the local nematic order…
Patterns are quotidian in nature. Distinct multiscale patterns are generally a consequence of nonequilibrium dynamical processes associated with mechanical or hydrodynamic instabilities. In this thesis, I report experimental investigations…
It is argued that to arrive at a quantitative description of the surface tension of a liquid drop as a function of its inverse radius, it is necessary to include the bending rigidity k and Gaussian rigidity k_bar in its description. New…
The physical mechanism of elasticity of liquid surfaces coated with colloidal particles is proposed. It is suggested that particles are separated by water clearings and the capillary interaction between them is negligible. The case is…
Three general modes are distinguished in the deformation of a thin shell; these are stretching, drilling, and bending. Of these, the drilling mode is the one more likely to emerge in a soft matter shell (as compared to a hard, structural…
Percolation of fine particles (fines) in a static bed of larger particles is central to many industrial and natural processes. Non-cohesive fines either pass through the bed or become trapped depending on multiple factors including particle…
The elastic theory of chromonic liquid crystals is not completely established. We know, for example, that for anomalously low twist constants (needed for chromonics) the classical Oseen-Frank theory may entail paradoxical consequences when…
Polydispersity is believed to have important effects on the formation of liquid crystal phases in suspensions of rod-like particles. To understand such effects, we analyse the phase behaviour of thin hard rods with length polydispersity.…
Theoretical description of the elastic interaction between colloidal particles in NLC with incorporation of the higher order elastic terms beyond the limit of dipole and qudrupole interactions is proposed. The expression for the elastic…
Many materials of interest are polycrystals, i.e. aggregates of single crystals. Randomly distributed orientations of single crystals lead to macroscopically isotropic properties. Here, we briefly review strategies of calculating effective…
We theoretically study the nematic ordering transition of rods that are able to elastically adjust their mutually excluded volumes. The model rods, which consist of a hard core surrounded by a deformable shell, mimic the structure of…
We derive the hydrodynamic equations for nematic liquid crystals lying on curved substrates. We invoke the Lagrange-Rayleigh variational principle to adapt the Ericksen-Leslie theory to two-dimensional nematics in which a degenerate…
This article investigates the interaction of nematic liquid crystals modeled by a simplified Ericksen-Leslie model with a rigid body. It is shown that this problem is locally strongly well-posed, and that it also admits a unique, global…
Using molecular dynamics simulation, we investigate the dynamics of stacking faults in fcc crystals in uniaxial stretching in a Lennard-Jones binary mixture composed of 4096 particles in three dimensions. We visualize stacking faults using…
We present explicit expressions of the helicity conservation in nematic liquid crystal flows, for both the Ericksen-Leslie and Landau-de Gennes theories. This is done by using a minimal coupling argument that leads to an Euler-like equation…
We study theoretically and numerically how hard frictionless particles in random packings can rearrange. We demonstrate the existence of two distinct unstable non-linear modes of rearrangement, both associated with the opening and the…
Chiral rodlike colloids exposed to strong depletion attraction may self-assemble into chiral membranes whose twisted director field differs from that of a 3D bulk chiral nematic. We formulate a simple microscopic variational theory to…
We have simulated the dynamics of a 2D gas of hard needles by event-oriented molecular dynamics. Various quantities namely translational and rotational diffusion constants and intermediate self scattering function have been explored and…
We consider a coupled system consisting of a kinetic equation coupled to a macroscopic Stokes (or Navier-Stokes) equation and describing the motion of a suspension of rigid rods in gravity. A reciprocal coupling leads to the formation of…