Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 62: Complex Fluids and Soft Matter II (joint DY/CPP)

DY 62.6: Talk

Friday, March 24, 2017, 11:00–11:15, HÜL 186

Transient dynamics in the accelerating region of collapsing freely suspended films — •Florian von Rüling and Alexey Eremin — Institute of Experimental Physics, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Universitätsplatz 2, 39016 Magdeburg, Germany

We report experimental studies on collapse dynamics of freely suspended smectic liquid crystal films. In contrast to soap films, whose collapse has been studied in detail, films of thermotropic liquid crystals have a well-defined layer structure and represent a quasi-two-dimensional fluid. The particular inner structure of smectics stabilizes freely suspended films with an extraordinary surface-to-volume-ratio. In our studies, we use tracer particles to visualise the flow in collapsing smectic films, thus enabling us to estimate the size of the dissipation region and to test the predictions of the theory. Using high-speed imaging we show that the advective flow involves the whole film, however, the flow velocity gradually reduces with the distance from the moving edge. The dissipation region is nearly independent of the film thickness.