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Numerical Simulations of Hydrodynamics of Nematic Liquid Crystals: Effects of Kinematic Transports

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2015

Shupeng Zhang ,
Chun Liu  and
Hui Zhang
Shupeng Zhang*
Affiliation:
School of Mathematical Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Chun Liu*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 18601, USA
Hui Zhang*
Affiliation:
School of Mathematical Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
*
Email:shupeng.zhang@gmail.com
Email:liu@math.psu.edu
Corresponding author.Email:hzhang@bnu.edu.cn
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Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effects of kinematic transports on the nematic liquid crystal system numerically and theoretically. The model we used is a “1+2” elastic continuum model simplified from the Ericksen-Leslie system. The numerical experiments are carried out by using a Legendre-Galerkin spectral method which can preserve the energy law in the discrete form. Based on this highly accurate numerical approach we find some interesting and important relationships between the kinematic transports and the characteristics of the flow. We make some analysis to explain these results. Several significant scaling properties are also verified by our simulations.

Keywords

65M7076A15Nematic liquid crystalskinematic transportsLegendre-Galerkin spectral methodtumblingflow-aligning
Type
Research Article
Information
Communications in Computational Physics , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , April 2011 , pp. 974 - 993
Copyright
Copyright © Global Science Press Limited 2011

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