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Instabilities In Newtonian Films And Nematic Liquid Crystal Droplets, Te-Sheng Lin

Dissertations

The instabilities of Newtonian films and nematic liquid crystal droplets within the framework of the long wave (lubrication) approximation are studied. For Newtonian films, it is found that, under destabilizing gravitational force, a contact line, modeled by a commonly used precursor film model, leads to free surface instabilities without any additional natural or imposed perturbations. In addition, there is a coupling between the surface instabilities and the transverse (fingering) instabilities which leads to complex behavior. All the observed phenomena are characterized by a single parameter D = (3Ca)^1/3 cot α where Ca is the capillary number and …