Tuesday, 12 October 2004 - 3:30 PM

This presentation is part of : Wineman Symposium

Irreducible function bases for simple fluids and liquid crystal films

David J. Steigmann, University of California, University of California, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 6133 Etcheverry Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720

We present a rigorous derivation of the canonical representation of a class of constitutive functions for liquid crystal films which has been widely used in various special forms in the fields of emulsion chemistry and cell-membrane biology. The representation yields the largest class of functions compatible with an appropriate definition of fluidity. The method used, which is based on the idea of integrating differential constraints defined over the set of hemitropic invariants, also furnishes established representation formulas in the classical theories of capillarity and three-dimensional compressible fluids.

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