Rheology of Columnar Liquid Crystals

Characteristic flow geometries for hexagonal columnar phases. 

It is important to note that, just as there is a major difference between the fluctuations of the columnar and smectic phases, the distortions relax at different lengths scales. In smectics the distortion relaxes in much larger scales than that of the distortions, whereas in columnars they relax in length scales comparable to that of the deformations.  

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