Technical Papers and Presentations

Liquid crystals - as all liquids - are generally modelled as incompressible media. In fact, mass-density changes occurring in these mesophases are minuscule and inconsequential in most regimes of interest. However, liquid crystals exhibit also phenomena that call for a more refined theory. In particular, it is experimentally well established that the Fréedericksz transition - i.e., the sudden switch from an undistorted to a distorted director field - triggered in a nematic liquid-crystal cell by an electrical pulse generates an audible acoustic signal.

The present paper aims at providing an explanation of this phenomenon, based on an original mathematical model implemented into COMSOL Multiphysics 4.1.