Liquid crystals on deformable surfaces

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftForschungsartikelBeigetragenBegutachtung

Abstract

Liquid crystals with molecules constrained to the tangent bundle of a curved surface show interesting phenomena resulting from the tight coupling of the elastic and bulk-free energies of the liquid crystal with geometric properties of the surface. We derive a thermodynamically consistent Landau-de Gennes-Helfrich model which considers the simultaneous relaxation of the Q-tensor field and the surface. The resulting system of tensor-valued surface partial differential equation and geometric evolution laws is numerically solved to tackle the rich dynamics of this system and to compute the resulting equilibrium shape. The results strongly depend on the intrinsic and extrinsic curvature contributions and lead to unexpected asymmetric shapes.

Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Aufsatznummer20200313
FachzeitschriftProceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
Jahrgang476
Ausgabenummer2241
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 1 Sept. 2020
Peer-Review-StatusJa

Schlagworte

Schlagwörter

  • gradient flow, nematic liquid crystal, shape relaxation