4th International workshop on nonequilibrium thermodynamics and complex fluids

	IWNET 2006	4th International workshop on nonequilibrium thermodynamics and complex fluids 3-7 september 2006, Rhodes, Greece

Home Scope Location Speakers Program Abstracts Author index Organizing Committee Scientific Committee Venue & Accomodation Registration News Contact		ORAL PRESENTATION Session: 4 Complex fluid deformation and rheology: Theories and thermodynamic relationships (scheduled: Tuesday, 15:15 ) Suspensions of rodlike molecules: phase transition and equlilibration time scale for a shear flow F. Otto, C. Löschke, J. Wachsmuth University of Bonn, Germany We consider the Doi-model for suspensions of rodlike molecules. We perform a bifurcation analysis for the isotropic-nematic phase transition in the force-free case. It shows that the type of bifurcation almost does not depend on the choice of the integral kernel modelling the excluded volume effect. We rigorously show the existence of exactly two branches of steady states up to rotations near the point where the isotropic phase becomes unstable. We consider as well a dilute solution exposed to a shear flow with large Deborah-number. The rod distribution will converge to an equilibrium asymptotically concentrated in flow direction. However the mean flux does not vanish (but the rods are constantly rotated). We prove that the equilibration is exponential on a time scale (Deborah number)^(-2/3). The difficulty is that the generator of the stochastic process is not symmetric. We give a hypocoercivity argument based on commutators between diffusion and mean flux in the equilibrium. © IWNET 2006

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