Related papers: Coexistence and Phase Separation in Sheared Comple…
A coarse grained description of a two phase fluid is used to study the steady state configuration of the interface separating the coexisting phases, and the motion of the contact line at which the interface intersects a solid boundary. The…
We investigate channel-confined, nematic liquid crystals using the Beris-Edwards model of nematohydrodynamics. Using strong homeotropic anchoring at the walls, we find multistability i.e. multiple coexisting states where the uniform nematic…
We study the dynamics of the phase behavior of a polymer blend in the presence of shear flow. By adopting a two fluid picture and using a generalization of the concept of material derivative, we construct kinetic equations that describe the…
The stability of liquid crystal phases in presence of small amount of non-mesogenic impurities is of general interest for a large spectrum of technological applications and in the theories of binary mixtures. Starting from the known phase…
Liquid crystals are synthetic and biological viscoelastic anisotropic soft matter materials that combine liquid fluidity with crystal anisotropy and find use in optical devices, sensor/actuators, lubrication, super-fibers. Frequently…
We investigate through numerical simulations how a two-dimensional crystal yields and flows under an applied shear. We focus over a range that allows us to both address the response in the limit of an infinitesimal shear rate and describe…
We explore models of hard-rod fluids with a finite number of allowed orientations, and construct their bulk phase diagrams within Onsager's second virial theory. For a one-component fluid, we show that the discretization of the orientations…
We study numerically phase separation in a binary fluid subject to an applied shear flow in two dimensions, with full hydrodynamics. To do so, we introduce a mixed finite-differencing/spectral simulation technique, with a transformation to…
We demonstrate that a first order isotropic-to-nematic phase transition in liquid crystals can be succesfully modeled within the generalized Landau-de Gennes theory by selecting an appropriate combination of elastic constants. The numerical…
Continuum hydrodynamic models of active liquid crystals have been used to describe dynamic self-organising systems such as bacterial swarms and cytoskeletal gels. A key prediction of such models is the existence of self-stabilising kink…
We investigate colloidal suspensions under shear flow through numerical experiments. By measuring the time-correlation function of a bond-orientational order parameter, we find a divergent time scale near a transition point from a…
Despite the simplicity of its molecular unit, water is a challenging system because of its uniquely rich polymorphism and predicted but yet unconfirmed features. Introducing a novel space of generalized coordinates that capture changes in…
Many systems in nature exhibit transitions between fluid-like states and solid-like states, or "jamming transitions". There is a strong theoretical foundation for understanding equilibrium phase transitions that involve solidification, or…
We present theory and simulation of simultaneous chemical demixing and phase ordering in a polymer-liquid crystal mixture in conditions where isotropic- isotropic phase separation is metastable with respect to isotropic-nematic phase…
A variety of complex fluids under shear exhibit complex spatio-temporal behaviour, including what is now termed rheological chaos, at moderate values of the shear rate. Such chaos associated with rheological response occurs in regimes where…
The long time dynamics of large particles trapped in two inhomogeneous turbulent shear flows is studied experimentally. Both flows present a common feature, a shear region that separates two colliding circulations, but with different…
Heterogeneities in the cell membrane due to coexisting lipid phases have been conjectured to play a major functional role in cell signaling and membrane trafficking. Thereby the material properties of multiphase systems, such as the line…
We study the dynamics of flow-networks in porous media using a pore-network model. First, we consider a class of erosion dynamics assuming a constitutive law depending on flow rate, local velocities, or shear stress at the walls. We show…
Soft modulated phases have been shown to undergo complex morphological transitions, in which layer remodeling induced by mean and Gaussian curvatures plays a major role. This is the case in smectic films under thermal treatment, where focal…
We consider a simple Maier-Saupe statistical model with the inclusion of disorder degrees of freedom to mimic the phase diagram of a mixture of rod-like and disc-like molecules. A quenched distribution of shapes leads to the existence of a…