Stability of flow of a liquid crystal layer on an inclined plane : PMM vol. 38, n 6, 1974, pp. 1031–1040

The framework of the linear mechanics of liquid crystal media [1] is used to study propagation of waves in a layer of a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) on an inclined plane, in a magnetic field, for three different cases of orientation of the anisotropy axis, namely orthogonal to the inclined plane, parallel to the inclined plane and orthogonal to the plane of flow. Such orientations of the anisotropy axis are realized in practice in the course of special machining of solid surfaces [2]. Exact solutions of the equations of motion are obtained describing the steady flow of the layer, and the behavior of small plane perturbations is studied. It is shown that two types of plane waves can propagate in a layer of the nematic mesophase, namely, the surface and the orientational waves. In the case of long surface waves the formulas for the critical Reynolds number are obtained. For the orientational waves a sufficient criterion of stability of the flow in the layer is obtained for two cases. The influence of the magnetic field and of the rheological parameters of NLC on the character of propagation of the first and second type waves is investigated.From amongst the papers dealing with wave propagation in NLC, we draw the readers' attention to [3] which deals with the longitudinal, shear and torsional waves in a liquid crystal domain and obtains the corresponding dispersion relationships.