Display Abstract

Title Some results on a variational model for nematic shells - Part B

Name Marco Veneroni
Country Italy
Email marco.veneroni@unipv.it
Co-Author(s) Antonio Segatti and Michael Snarski
Submit Time 2014-02-28 11:16:33
Session
Special Session 91: Variational methods for evolution equations
Contents
In this talk and in the preceding Part A, we discuss some features of a newly proposed variational model for nematic shells, which consist in a thin film of liquid crystals coating a particle. In particular, we consider a surface energy, recently proposed by G. Napoli and L. Vergori, which exhibits a combination of effects related both to intrinsic and extrinsic geometric quantities. In this talk we focus on the case of toroidal shells: We present finer results on the qualitative behaviour of the equilibrium solutions and we study the well-posedness of the gradient flow of the energy, which we use to produce numerical approximations of the minimizers. Particular emphasis will be given in explaining how the topology and the geometry of the surface influence the existence and the behaviour of the equilibrium configurations.