Capillary instabilities in a thin nematic liquid crystalline fiber embedded in a viscous matrix (Q699704)

The paper is concerned with the mechanics and stability of a thin cylindrical nematic liquid crystalline fiber embedded in an immiscible viscous matrix. The liquid crystalline order is treated in terms of a macroscopic director in the spirit of Ericksen-Leslie theory. The nemato-capillary equations are formulated including the effect of interfacial viscous shear forces due to flow of the viscous matrix. A representative axial nematic orientation texture is studied. The surface disturbance is expressed through normal modes which include the azimuthal wavenumber to take into account non-axisymmetric modes. Linear stability analysis of capillary instabilities is performed. Capillary instabilities in nematic fibers reflect the anisotropic nature of liquid crystals, such as the orientation contribution to surface elasticity and surface bending stresses. Surface gradients of bending stresses provide additional anisotropic contributions to the capillary pressure that may renormalize the classical displacement and curvature forces existing in any fluid fiber. The exact nature (stabilizing or destabilizing) and magnitude of the renormalization of the displacement and curvature forces depend on the nematic orientation and on the anisotropic contribution to the surface energy. Accordingly, capillary instabilities may be axisymmetric or non-axisymmetric, with finite or unbounded wavelengths. If the anchoring energy strongly promotes normal (homeotropic) orientation to the surface, the usually stabilizing curvature forces become destabilizing, and capillary instabilities with fibrillation phenomena arise. Thus, the classical fiber-to-droplet transformation is one of several possible instability pathways while others include surface fibrillation. The contribution of the viscosity ratio to the capillary instabilities is analyzed by two parameters, the fiber and matrix Ohnesorge number, which represent the ratio between viscous and surface forces in each phase. The capillary instabilites are suppressed in terms of increasing either the fiber or matrix Ohnesorge number, but estimated droplet sizes after fiber breakup in axisymmetric instabilities substantially decrease with increasing the matrix Ohnesorge number. In a certain range of fiber Ohnesorge number, the dependence on the wavenumber corresponding to the maximum growth rate on the viscosity ratio is in qualitative agreement with previous studies for Newtonian fluids.