Transport phenomena in anisotropic fluids and liquid crystals (Q1085693)

This paper uses principles of irreversible thermodynamics in seeking to describe the rather complex behaviour of certain non-Newtonian fluids. The first part of the paper investigates the viscosity properties of anisotropic fluids having a broken rotational invariance due to the presence of a large orienting magnetic field, giving rise to uniform alignment in samples of nematic liquid crystals of ferro-fluids. Using a linear constitutive relation for the stress tensor in local conservation laws, the author examines the problems of plane Couette and Poiseuille flow of such liquids. Five independent viscosity coefficients arise in the theory which may be determined by the measurement of a twist viscosity together with flow measurements for four distinct alignments of the applied magnetic field. Illustrative examples of experimental data and computer simulation results are discussed. The second part considers the case when the alignment is not uniformly fixed, but is characterized by a second order tensor which is considered to be an additional macroscopic variable satisfying a certain balance equation. The resulting modified equations provide a model for describing physical phenomena such as flow alignment, flow birefringence, viscoelasticity and non-Newtonian flow behaviour in molecular liquids, polymeric liquids, detergents and liquid crystals in both isotropic and nematic phase.