Morphologies and flow patterns in quenching of lamellar systems with shear

Abstract

We study the behavior of a fluid quenched from the disordered into the lamellar phase under the action of a shear flow. The dynamics of the system is described by Navier-Stokes and convection-diffusion equations with pressure tensor and chemical potential derived by the Brazovskii free-energy. Our simulations are based on a mixed numerical method with Lattice Boltzmann equation and finite difference scheme for Navier-Stokes and order parameter equations, respectively. We focus on cases where banded flows are observed with two different slopes for the component of velocity in the direction of the applied flow. Close to the walls the system reaches a lamellar order with very few defects and the slope of the horizontal velocity is higher than the imposed shear rate. In the middle of the system the local shear rate is lower than the imposed one and the system looks as a mixture of tilted lamellae, droplets and small elongated domains. We refer to this as to a region with a Shear Induced Structures (SIS) configuration. The local behavior of the stress shows that the system with the coexisting lamellar and SIS regions is in mechanical equilibrium. This phenomenon occurs, at fixed viscosity, for shear rates under a certain threshold; when the imposed shear rate is sufficiently large, lamellar order develops in the whole system. Effects of different viscosities have been also considered: The SIS region is observed only at low enough viscosity. We compare the above scenario with the usual one of shear banding. In particular, we do not find evidence for a plateau of the stress at varying imposed shear rates in the region with banded flow. We interpret our results as due to a tendency of the lamellar system to oppose to the presence of the applied flow.