Related papers: Minimization principle for shear alignment of liqu…
Nematic liquid crystals in a polyhedral domain, a prototype for bistable displays, may be described by a unit-vector field subject to tangent boundary conditions. Here we consider the case of a rectangular prism. For configurations with…
Dynamics of small particles, both living such as swimming bacteria and inanimate, such as colloidal spheres, has fascinated scientists for centuries. If one could learn how to control and streamline their chaotic motion, that would open…
We extend the results about existence of minimizers, relaxation, and approximation proven by Chambolle et al. in 2002 and 2007 for an energy related to epitaxially strained crystalline films, and by Braides, Chambolle, and Solci in 2007 for…
We use numerical simulations to study the flow of athermal, frictionless, soft-core two dimensional spherocylinders driven by a uniform steady-state simple shear applied at a fixed volume and a fixed finite strain rate $\dot\gamma$. Energy…
We consider an energy functional that arises in micromagnetic and liquid crystal theory on thin films. In particular, our energy comprises a non-convex term that models anti-symmetric exchange as well as an anisotropy term. We devise an…
The dynamics of fluid vesicles in oscillatory shear flow was studied using differential equations of two variables: the Taylor deformation parameter and inclination angle $\theta$. In a steady shear flow with a low viscosity $\eta_{\rm…
Methods for studying droplets in models with quenched disorder are critically examined. Low energy excitations in two dimensional models are investigated by finding minimal energy interior excitations and by computing the effect of bulk…
We show that nonlinear continuum elasticity can be effective in modeling plastic flows in crystals if it is viewed as Landau theory with an infinite number of equivalent energy wells whose configuration is dictated by the symmetry group…
We formulate the laws governing the dynamics of a crystalline solid in which a continuous distribution of dislocations is present. Our formulation is based on new differential geometric concepts, which in particular relate to Lie groups. We…
We present a robust discretization of the Ericksen model of liquid crystals with variable degree of orientation coupled with colloidal effects and electric fields. The total energy consists of the Ericksen energy, a weak anchoring (or…
Atomic correlations in a simple liquid in steady-state flow under shear stress were studied by molecular dynamics simulation. The local atomic level strain was determined through the anisotropic pair-density function (PDF). The atomic level…
The deformation and break-up of Newtonian/viscoelastic droplets are studied in confined shear flow. Our numerical approach is based on a combination of Lattice-Boltzmann models (LBM) and finite difference schemes, the former used to model…
We study the behaviour of global minimizers of a continuum Landau-de Gennes energy functional for nematic liquid crystals, in three-dimensional axially symmetric domains domains diffeomorphic to a ball (a nematic droplet) and in a…
We consider the well-known minimizing-movement approach to the definition of a solution of gradient-flow type equations by means of an implicit Euler scheme depending on an energy and a dissipation term. We perturb the energy by considering…
This article analyzes modulated phases in liquid crystals, from the long-established cholesteric and blue phases to the recently discovered twist-bend, splay-bend, and splay nematic phases, as well as the twist-grain-boundary (TGB) and…
In linearised continuum elasticity, the elastic strain due to a straight dislocation line decays as $O(r^{-1})$, where $r$ denotes the distance to the defect core. It is shown in Ehrlacher, Ortner, Shapeev (2016) that the core correction…
A droplet that impacts onto a solid substrate deforms in a complex dynamics. To extract the principal mechanisms that dominate this dynamics we deploy numerical simulations based on the phase field method. Direct comparison with experiments…
We present a general theory of electric field effects in liquid crystals where the dielectric tensor depends on the orientation order. As applications, we examine (i) the director fluctuations in nematic states in electric field for…
We derive a F\"{o}ppl-von K\'{a}rm\'{a}n-type constitutive model for solid liquid crystalline plates where the nematic director may or may not rotate freely relative to the elastic network. To obtain the reduced two-dimensional model, we…
We show how dynamical equations for liquid films and drops on uneven surfaces, including contact line dynamics and evaporation/condensation effects, may be formulated as a variational dynamics, generated via Onsager's variational principle.…