In this paper, we investigate blow up criteria for the local smooth solutions to the 3D incompressible nematic liquid crystal flows via the components of the gradient velocity field
\(\nabla u\) and the gradient orientation field
\(\nabla d\). More precisely, we show that
\(0< T_{ \ast}<+\infty\) is the maximal time interval if and only if
$$\begin{aligned} & \int_{0}^{T_{\ast}} \bigl\Vert \Vert \partial_{i}u\Vert _{L_{x_{i}} ^{\gamma}} \bigr\Vert _{L_{x_{j}x_{k}}^{\alpha}}^{\beta}+ \|\nabla d\| _{L^{\infty}}^{\frac{8}{3}}\mathrm{d}t=\infty, \\ &\quad\text{ with } \frac{2}{\alpha}+\frac{2}{\beta}\leq\frac{3\alpha +2}{4\alpha}, \text{ and } 1\leq\gamma\leq\alpha,2< \alpha\leq+\infty, \end{aligned}$$
or
$$\begin{aligned} \int_{0}^{T_{\ast}}\|\partial_{3}u_{3} \|^{\beta}_{L^{\alpha}}+\| \nabla d\|^{\frac{8}{3}}_{L^{\infty}} \mathrm{d}t=\infty,\quad\text{with } \frac{3}{\alpha}+\frac{2}{\beta}\leq \frac{3(\alpha+2)}{4 \alpha}, \text{ and } 2< \alpha\leq\infty, \end{aligned}$$
where
\(i,j,k\in\{1,2,3\}\),
\(i\neq j\),
\(i\neq k\), and
\(j\neq k\).