Influence of Electric Fields on Flow of Liquid Crystal Mixture in a Circular Tube With Electrode Surface

Liquid crystal is one of functional fluids to control an apparent viscosity using an electric field intensity. It is also called ER (Electro-rheological) fluids. In the present experiment a liquid crystal mixture made of some kinds of the nematic liquid crystal is used. The responses of the pressure drop are examined when the liquid crystal mixture flows in a circular tube with the electrode walls on some parts of the inner surface of the tube for the constant flow rates. The four pair of the electrode is used and the voltages are added in the peripheral direction. When the voltages are applied on the liquid crystal mixture and removed, the pressure responses of the inlet of the circular tube are measured with the pressure transducer. On the other hand, the pulse-wave voltages are added to the electrodes to control the pressure drop using the pulse width modulation or the pulse frequency modulation. The diameter of the circular tube is 1.0mm. The isotropic-nematic transition is 90.0°C and smectic-nematic transition is −44.0°C for the liquid crystal mixture. The open-loop test facility with the liquid crystal mixture is set in a pyrostat to keep the temperature constant.