The numerical solution of the flow of a liquid crystal governed by a particular instance of the Ericksen-Leslie equations is considered. Convergence of finite element approximations is established under appropriate regularity hypotheses, and numerical experiments exhibiting the interaction of singularities and the coupling of the director and momentum equations are presented.
We discuss the general energetic variational approaches for hydrodynamic systems of complex fluids. In these energetic variational approaches, the least action principle (LAP) with action functional gives the Hamiltonian parts (conservative force) of the hydrodynamic systems, and the maximum/minimum dissipation principle (MDP), i.e., Onsager's principle, gives the dissipative parts (dissipative force) of the systems. When we combine the two systems derived from the two different principles, we obtain a whole coupled nonlinear system of equations satisfying the dissipative energy laws. We will discuss the important roles of MDP in designing numerical method for computations of hydrodynamic system in complex fluids. We will reformulate the dissipation in energy equation in terms of a rate in time by using an appropriate evolution equations, then the MDP is employed in the reformulated dissipation to obtain the dissipative force for the hydrodynamic system. The systems are consistent with the Hamiltonian parts which are derived from LAP. This procedure allows the usage of lower order element (a continuous C 0 finite element) in numerical method to solve the system rather than high order elements, and at the same time preserves the dissipative energy law. We also verify this method through some numerical experiments in simulating the free interface motion in the mixture of two different fluids.
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