Electro-Rheological Response of Liquid Crystals under Oscillatory Squeeze Flow

Orientational transition in nematic liquid crystals under oscillatory Poiseuille flow

We investigate the orientational behaviour of a homeotropically aligned nematic liquid crystal subjected to an oscillatory plane Poiseuille flow produced by an alternating pressure gradient. For small pressure amplitudes the director oscillates within the flow plane around the initial homeotropic position, whereas for higher amplitudes a spatially homogeneous transition to out-of-plane director...

Flow of electro-rheological materials

An electro-rheological fluid is a material in which a particulate solid is suspended in an electrically non-conducting fluid such as oil. On the application of an electric field, the viscosity and other material properties undergo dramatic and significant changes. In this paper, the particulate imbedded fluid is considered as a homogeneous continuum. I t is assumed that the Cauchy stress depend...

Electro-optic response of polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystals

The dynamic response of a polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal (BPLC) is comprised of two distinct processes: Kerr effect-induced local reorientation and electrostriction-induced lattice distortion. A double exponential rise/decay model is proposed to analyze the underlying physical mechanisms. If the electric field is below a critical field (Ec), Kerr effect dominates and the response ...

Rheological Properties of Bent-Core Liquid Crystals

We show that bent-core liquid crystalline materials exhibit non-Newtonian flow in their optically isotropic liquid phase. We conjecture that this behavior is due to the existence of nanostructured, fluctuating clusters composed of a few smectic-like layers. Shear alignment of these clusters explains the shear thinning observed in bent-core liquid crystals having either a nematic phase or nonmod...

Electro-mechanical effects in liquid crystals