Shearing Flows in Liquid Crystal Models

Abstract

The liquid crystal phase is a phase of matter between the solid and liquid phase whose flow is characterized by a velocity field and a director field which describes locally the orientation of the liquid crystal. In this work we explore shearing flows in two related continuum models of liquid crystals. The first is a phenomenological model of frictional forces in a geological fault, which is motivated by the second model, the Leslie-Ericksen continuum theory of liquid crystals.