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The Role of Inertia and Dissipation in the Dynamics of the Director for a Nematic Liquid Crystal Coupled with an Electric Field

Part of: Foundations, constitutive equations, rheology Partial differential equations, initial value and time-dependent initial-boundary value problems Applications to specific types of physical systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2015

Peder Aursand  and
Johanna Ridder
Peder Aursand*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO–7491 Trondheim, Norway
Johanna Ridder
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo, P.O.Box NO-1053, Blindern, Oslo-0316, Norway
*
*Corresponding author. Email addresses: peder.aursand@math.ntnu.no (P. Aursand), johanrid@math.uio.no (J. Ridder)
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Abstract

We consider the dynamics of the director in a nematic liquid crystal when under the influence of an applied electric field. Using an energy variational approach we derive a dynamic model for the director including both dissipative and inertial forces.

A numerical scheme for the model is proposed by extending a scheme for a related variational wave equation. Numerical experiments are performed studying the realignment of the director field when applying a voltage difference over the liquid crystal cell. In particular, we study how the relative strength of dissipative versus inertial forces influence the time scales of the transition between the initial configuration and the electrostatic equilibrium state.

Keywords

Nematic liquid crystalsFréedericksz transitiondynamics of director fields

MSC classification

Secondary: 76A15: Liquid crystals 82D30: Random media, disordered materials (including liquid crystals and spin glasses) 65M06: Finite difference methods
Type
Research Article
Information
Communications in Computational Physics , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , July 2015 , pp. 147 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Global-Science Press 2015 

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