Modelling a planar bistable device on different scales

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Majumdar, A (University of Bath)
• Tuesday 19 March 2013, 09:50-10:40
• Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Mustapha Amrani.

The Mathematics of Liquid Crystals

This talk focuses on the development, analysis and numerical implementation of mathematical models for a planar bistable nematic device reported in a paper by Tsakonas, Davidson, Brown and Mottram. We model this device within a continuum Landau-de Gennes framework and investigate the cases of strong and weak anchoring separately. In both cases, we find six distinct states and compute bifurcation diagrams as a function of the anchoring strength. We introduce the concept of an optimal boundary condition that prescribes the optimal interpolation between defects at the vertices. We develop a parallel lattice-based Landau-de Gennes interaction potential, by analogy with the Lebwohl-Lasher lattice-based model and study multistability within this discrete framework too by means of Monte Carlo methods. We also use the off-lattice based Gay Berne model to study the structure of the stable states. The different numerical approaches are compared and we discuss their relative strengths a nd shortcomings. We conclude by a brief discussion on a multiscale modelling approach wherein we can couple a lattice-based interaction potential to a conventional continuum model. This is joint work with Chong Luo and Radek Erban.

This talk is part of the Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All CMS events
• Featured lists
• INI info aggregator
• Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series
• School of Physical Sciences
• Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute
• bld31

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.