Textures of Sheared LCPs

The transient phenomena discussed above are no doubt produced by distortions of the nematic director field under shear these distortions, known as textures, can be visualized 

Textures exist in small-molecule nematics, but are much more persistent in LCPs because of the high viscosities of the latter. One can estimate that the annealing time tg for spontaneous disappearance of a disclination texture from a nematic layer of thickness h is 

Other quasi-periodic textures have been reported, including birefringent stripes parallel to the flow direction (Gleeson et al. 1992). A low-shear-rate stripe texture observed in PBG solutions can be attributed to roll cells (Larson and Mead 1993), similar to those 

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