Laplace pressure as a surface stress in fluid vesicles

DOI10.1088/0305-4470/39/14/019zbMATH Open1101.76047arXivcond-mat/0602289OpenAlexW2070777138MaRDI QIDQ5201624FDOQ5201624

Authors: Jemal Guven 

Publication date: 19 April 2006

Published in: Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Consider a surface, enclosing a fixed volume, described by a free-energy depending only on the local geometry; for example, the Canham-Helfrich energy quadratic in the mean curvature describes a fluid membrane. The stress at any point on the surface is determined completely by geometry. In equilibrium, its divergence is proportional to the Laplace pressure, normal to the surface, maintaining the constraint on the volume. It is shown that this source itself can be expressed as the divergence of a position-dependent surface stress. As a consequence, the equilibrium can be described in terms of a conserved `effective' surface stress. Various non-trivial geometrical consequences of this identification are explored. In a cylindrical geometry, the cross-section can be viewed as a closed planar Euler elastic curve. With respect to an appropriate centre the effective stress itself vanishes; this provides a remarkably simple relationship between the curvature and the position along the loop. In two or higher dimensions, it is shown that the only geometry consistent with the vanishing of the effective stress is spherical. It is argued that the appropriate generalization of the loop result will involve `null' stresses.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0602289

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zbMATH Keywords

Euler-Lagrange equationvolume constraint

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Variational principles of physics (49S05) Variational methods applied to problems in fluid mechanics (76M30)

Cited In (9)

• On the Young-Laplace relation and the evolution of a perturbed ellipsoid
• On the curvature effect of thin membranes
• Active elastic thin shell theory for cellular deformations
• Surface tension and Laplace pressure in triangulated surface models for membranes without fixed boundary
• Computing the volume enclosed by a periodic surface and its variation to model a follower pressure
• Membrane approach to balloons and some related surfaces
• PRESSURE COMPARISON BETWEEN THE SPHERICAL CELLULAR MODEL AND THE THOMAS-FERMI MODEL
• Surface tension with normal curvature in curved space-time
• Relaminarization in highly favourable pressure gradients on a convex surface

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