Couette flow nematic liquid crystal

Fig. 3 The coordinate system of a nematic liquid crystal undergoing planar Couette flow. In a space fixed coordinate system (e, e, e ) the strain rate Vu is applied. This means...

P.E. Cladis and S. Torza, "Flow Instabilities in Couette Flow in Nematic Liquid Crystals," Coll. Inter. Sci., 4, 387 (1976). 

Macromolecules, especially DNA, that are difficult to dissolve in stretched polymer sheets or nematic liquid crystals have often successfully been aligned in a flow. Flow LD is measured in a solution between a stationary and a fast-rotating cylinder using a Couette or Maxwell cell. It has proved very useful for the study of the interaction between mac-romolecules and smaller molecules, for example the attachment of carcinogenics to DNA. The long axis of the DNA molecules, the helix axis, becomes the orientation axis. So far such studies have primarily been performed in the UV-visible region. The two... 

Couette flow is considered in Section 5.7 and Poiseuille flow is discussed in Section 5.8. Some comments on a scaling analysis for Poiseuille flow of a nematic liquid crystal are contained in Section 5.8.3. These scaling results are important in establishing and validating the Ericksen-LesUe dynamic theory of nematics since they make predictions about flow which were confirmed experimentally. 

We now investigate the Couette flow of a nematic liquid crystal in precisely the same type of experiment discussed above for an anisotropic fluid described in Fig. 5.8 and in essence follow the work of Atkin and Leslie [6]. The one-constant approximation for the nematic elastic energy will be assumed in order to simplify the presentation ... 

R.J. Atkin and F.M. Leslie, Couette Flow of Nematic Liquid Crystals, Q, Jl Mech. Appl Math, 23, S3-S24 (1970). 

RE. Cladis and S. Torza, Stability of Nematic Liquid Crystals in Couette Flow, Phys. Rev. Lett, 35, 1283-1286 (1975). 

P.K. Currie, Couette Flow of a Nematic Liquid Crystal in the Presence of a Magnetic Field, Arch. Rat. Mech. Anal, 37, 222-242 (1970). 

P. Pieranski and E. Guyon, Cylindrical Couette Flow Instabilities in Nematic Liquid Crystals, Adv. Chem. Phys., 32, 151-161 (1975). 

---