Related papers: Existence and uniqueness of minimizers for axisymm…
Governing equations of motion for a viscous incompressible material surface are derived from the balance laws of continuum mechanics. The surface is treated as a time-dependent smooth orientable manifold of codimension one in an ambient…
The recent literature has intensively studied two classes of nonlocal variational problems, namely the ones related to the minimisation of energy functionals that act on functions in suitable Sobolev-Gagliardo spaces, and the ones related…
Nematic solids respond strongly to changes in ambient heat or light, significantly differently parallel and perpendicular to the director. This phenomenon is well characterized for uniform director fields, but not for defect textures. We…
We consider the minimizers of $L^{2}$-critical inhomogeneous variational problems with a spatially decaying nonlinear term in an open bounded domain $\Omega$ of $\mathbb{R}^{N}$ which contains $0$. We prove that there is a threshold…
Nematic elastomers and glasses are solids that display spontaneous distortion under external stimuli. Recent advances in the synthesis of sheets with controlled heterogeneities have enabled their actuation into non-trivial shapes with…
In this work, we consider the solid-state dewetting of an axisymmetric thin film on a curved-surface substrate, with the assumption that the substrate morphology is also axisymmetric. Under the assumptions of axisymmetry, the surface…
We introduce and study certain variants of Gamow's liquid drop model in which an anisotropic surface energy replaces the perimeter. After existence and nonexistence results are established, the shape of minimizers is analyzed. Under…
Since the pioneering work of Canham and Helfrich, variational formulations involving curvature-dependent functionals, like the classical Willmore functional, have proven useful for shape analysis of biomembranes. We address minimizers of…
Motivated by problems arising in tear film dynamics, we present a model for the extensional flow of thin sheets of nematic liquid crystal. The rod-like molecules of these substances impart an elastic contribution to its response. We rescale…
A simplified, pseudoplastic rheology characterized by constant viscosity plateaus above and below a transition strain rate is applied to axisymmetric, gravitationally driven spreading of a thin fluid film with constant volume flux source in…
Motivated by a problem originating in the study of defect structures in nematic liquid crystals, we describe and study a numerical algorithm for the resolution of a Plateau-like problem. The energy contains the area of a two-dimensional…
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…
Unit-vector fields $\nvec$ on a convex polyhedron $P$ subject to tangent boundary conditions provide a simple model of nematic liquid crystals in prototype bistable displays. The equilibrium and metastable configurations correspond to…
Nematic elastomers and glasses deform spontaneously when subjected to temperature changes. This property can be exploited in the design of heterogeneously patterned thin sheets that deform into a non-trivial shape when heated or cooled. In…
We study existence and properties of one-dimensional edge domain walls in ultrathin ferromagnetic films with uniaxial in-plane magnetic anisotropy. In these materials, the magnetization vector is constrained to lie entirely in the film…
The instability, dynamics and morphological transitions of patterns in thin liquid films on periodic striped surfaces (consisting of alternating less and more wettable stripes) are investigated based on 3-D nonlinear simulations that…
We consider a variational model for periodic partitions of the upper half-space into three regions, where two of them have prescribed volume and are subject to the geometrical constraint that their union is the subgraph of a function, whose…
In this work, we study the mechanical behavior of solids with microstructure using the framework of Cosserat elasticity with a single unit director. This formulation captures the coupling between deformation and orientational fields that…
We study global minimizers of the Landau-de Gennes (LdG) energy functional for nematic liquid crystals, on arbitrary three-dimensional simply connected geometries with topologically non-trivial and physically relevant Dirichlet boundary…
Dynamics at low Reynolds numbers experiences recent revival in the fields of biophysics and active matter. While in bulk isotropic fluids it is exhaustively studied, this is less so in anisotropic fluids and in confined situations. Here, we…