Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Dynamics Of Discs In A Nematic Liquid Crystal, Alena Antipova

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, a new way of simulating a two-way coupling between a liquid crystal and an immersed object is proposed. It can be used for objects of various geometries and can be expanded to be used for an object of any geometry. Additionally, a simple yet effective model was suggested for calculations of transmitted light through a nematic liquid crystal sample. This model allowed us to clarify the behavior of a ferromagnetic disc in a nematic liquid crystal observed in experiments and incorrectly interpreted at that time.

Our simulations have demonstrated the following: in the absence of external forces …

Observational Signatures From Self-Gravitating Protostellar Disks, Alexander L. Desouza

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Protostellar disks are the ubiquitous corollary outcome of the angular momentum conserving, gravitational collapse of molecular cloud cores into stars. Disks are an essential component of the star formation process, mediating the accretion of material onto the protostar, and for redistributing excess angular momentum during the collapse. We present a model to explain the observed correlation between mass accretion rates and stellar mass that has been inferred from observations of intermediate to upper mass T Tauri stars. We explain this correlation within the framework of gravitationally driven torques parameterized in terms of Toomre’s Q criterion. Our models reproduce both the …

Hybrid Lattice Boltzmann - Molecular Dynamics Simulations With Both Simple And Complex Fluids, Frances E. Mackay

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The behaviour and properties of colloidal suspensions strongly depend on the interactions arising between the immersed colloidal particles and the solvent. However, modelling such interactions is not at all straightforward; the larger time and length scales experienced by the colloidal particles compared to the solvent molecules makes all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of such systems completely impractical. Therefore a coarse-grained representation of the fluid is required, along with a method to couple this fluid to the colloidal particles.

In the first part of this thesis, we propose a new method for coupling both point and composite MD particles to an …