Fluid vesicles with internal nematic order (Q2116317)

The authors propose a new model to represent the interaction between a fluid flow and vesicle membranes in a domain \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^{M}\), \( M=2,3\). They define\ \(\phi (x,t)\) as the phase field variable which is used to localize the interior (\(\phi =1\)) and the exterior (\(\phi =-1\)) of the membrane, then the total energy \[ E_{tot}(u,\phi ,d)=E_{kin}(u)+\lambda_{bp}E_{bp}(\phi )+\lambda_{nem}E_{nem}(d,\phi )+\lambda_{anch}E_{anch}(d,\phi ) \] of the system, where \(u\) is the fluid velocity and \(d\) the mean director vector of the liquid crystal molecules. The kinetic energy is \(E_{kin}(u)=\frac{1}{2}\int_{\Omega}\left\vert u\right\vert^{2}dx\). The bending energy is \(E_{bp}(\phi )=E_{ben}(\phi )+ \frac{1}{2}\eta (B(\phi )-\beta )^{2}\), \(E_{ben}(\phi )\) being defined as \[ E_{ben}(\phi )=\frac{\varepsilon}{2}\int_{\Omega}(\Delta \phi -\frac{1}{ \varepsilon^{2}}G(\phi ))^{2}dx, \] \(G\) involving the Ginzburg-Landau potential, a given function representing the spontaneous curvature and a function that appears when the spontaneous curvature is considered. The nematic energy is \[ E_{nem}(d,\phi )=\int_{\Omega}I(\phi )(\frac{1}{2} \left\vert \nabla d\right\vert^{2}+P(d))dx, \] \(P(d)\) being the double-well potential whose minimums are located at \(\left\vert d\right\vert =1\). The anchoring energy is \[ E_{anch}(d,\phi )=\frac{1}{2}\int_{\Omega}(\delta_{1}\left\vert d\right\vert^{2}\left\vert \nabla \phi \right\vert^{2}+\delta_{2}\left\vert d\cdot \nabla \phi \right\vert^{2})dx. \] They finally define the system of partial differential equations which describes the motion of the system: \(u_{t}+(u\cdot \nabla )u+\nabla p-\nabla \cdot \sigma_{tot}=0\), \(\nabla \cdot u=0\), \(d_{t}+(u\cdot \nabla )d+\gamma_{nem}( \frac{\delta E_{tot}}{\delta d})=0\), \(\phi_{t}+(u\cdot \nabla )\phi -\nabla \cdot (\gamma_{ben}\nabla \frac{\delta E_{tot}}{\delta \phi})=0\). They introduce further variables and reformulate this problem. The main part of the paper presents a numerical scheme based on a generic finite element space-discrete scheme or on a fully discrete scheme. In the final part of their paper, the authors present the results of simulations and they analyze the influence of few parameters.