Related papers: Curvature-mediated Programming of Liquid Crystal M…
By Monte Carlo simulations of a soft ellipsoid model for liquid crystals, we study whether a layer of grafted liquid-crystalline chain molecules can induce tilt in a nematic fluid. The chains are fairly short (four monomers) and made of the…
We develop a formal analogy between configurational stresses in two distinct physical systems, and study the flows that they induce when the configurations of interest include topological de- fects. The two systems in question are…
Cells control fluid flows with a spatial and temporal precision that far exceeds the capabilities of current microfluidic technologies. Cells achieve this superior spatio-temporal control by harnessing dynamic networks of cytoskeleton and…
Locally broken symmetries are used across fields to transport matter, particles and information in preferential directions. Beyond local mechanisms, spatially distributed nonlinearities in crystalline media have enabled non-reciprocal…
We investigate how symmetry, exact coherent structures (ECSs), and their invariant manifolds organize spontaneous flow reversals in a 2D active nematic confined to a periodic channel. In minimal flow units commensurate with the intrinsic…
The paper presents the results of numerical solution of the evolution law for the constrained mean-curvature flow. This law originates in the theory of phase transitions for crystalline materials and describes the evolution of closed…
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…
Flows with deformable interfaces are commonly controlled by applying an external field or modifying the boundaries that interact with the fluid, but realizing such solutions can be demanding or impractical in various scenarios. Here, we…
Experimental data on thin films of cylinder-forming block copolymers (BC) -- free-standing BC membranes as well as supported BC films -- strongly suggest that the local orientation of the BC patterns is coupled to the geometry in which the…
Topological defects, such as disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals, are fundamental to many physical systems and applications. In this work, we study the behavior of nematic disclinations in thin parallel-plate geometries with…
We studied in-plane bistable alignments of nematic liquid crystals confined by two frustrated surfaces by means of Monte Carlo simulations of the Lebwohl-Lasher spin model. The surfaces are prepared with orientational checkerboard patterns,…
This work introduces the framed curvature flow, a generalization of both the curve shortening flow and the vortex filament equation. Here, the magnitude of the velocity vector is still determined by the curvature, but its direction is given…
Deformation based circulating tumor cell (CTC) microchips are a representative diagnostic device for early cancer detection. This type of device usually involves a process of CTC trapping in a confined microgeometry. Further understanding…
In this paper we introduce the target flow -- a specific curve shortening flow with an ambient forcing term -- that, given an embedded (not necessarily convex) target curve, will attempt to evolve a given source curve to that target. The…
Due to ample applications from medical services to industrial activities, the study of flow and heat transfer through a curved duct has attracted considerable attention to the researchers. In this paper, a comprehensive numerical study is…
A theoretical analysis of homeotropic alignment induced by nanoparticles (NPs) in a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) sample cell is presented. It is found that such alignment on the surface of a NP causes a change in the orientation of the…
The main aim of this study is to find the best, most rapid, and the most accurate numerical method to find the liquid-gas interface of capillary driven flow during the time in circular Microchannels by using COMSOL Multiphysics software.…
The curvature field is measured from tracer particle trajectories in a two-dimensional fluid flow that exhibits spatiotemporal chaos, and is used to extract the hyperbolic and elliptic points of the flow. These special points are pinned to…
We study the equilibrium shapes of vesicles, with an in-plane nematic order, using a Monte-Carlo scheme and show that highly curved shapes, like tubes and discs, with a striking similarity to the structures engendered by certain curvature…
In this article, we have developed a computational model to determine the droplet formation regime and its transition in a square microfluidic flow-focusing device that eventually dictate the droplet shape, size, and its formation…