Frank energy, field interactions

Associated with the distortion of the director field there is an elastic free-energy which was discussed by Ossen, Frank and others. (For details see the monographs. ) The equilibrium director configuration can be determined by minimizing the total free-energy, i.e. the sum of the interaction and the elastic contributions. An equivalent method is to determine the balance between the volume torques arising from the interaction with the field and from the distortion respectively, The former torque can be given as... 

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