Periodic forcing in viscous fingering of a nematic liquid crystal

Details Periodic forcing in viscous fingering of a nematic liquid crystal Periodic forcing in viscous fingering of a nematic liquid crystal

2000-06-08

arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0006131v3

Phys. Rev. E 64, 056225 (2001)

Physics

Condensed Matter

Soft Condensed Matter

completely rewritten version, more clear exposition of results (14 pages in Revtex + 7 eps figures)

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevE.64.056225

We study viscous fingering of an air-nematic interface in a radial Hele-Shaw cell when periodically switching on and off an electric field, which reorients the nematic and thus changes its viscosity, as well as the surface tension and its anisotropy (mainly enforced by a single groove in the cell). We observe undulations at the sides of the fingers which correlate with the switching frequency and with tip oscillations which give maximal velocity to smallest curvatures. These lateral undulations appear to be decoupled from spontaneous (noise-induced) side branching. We conclude that the lateral undulations are generated by successive relaxations between two limiting finger widths. The change between these two selected pattern scales is mainly due to the change in the anisotropy. This scenario is confirmed by numerical simulations in the channel geometry, using a phase-field model for anisotropic viscous fingering.

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