Shear alignments in three-dimensional simulations of lamellar phases

Experiments studying layer orientation of sheared lamellar phases have consistently observed not only the seemingly obvious parallel orientation (with layers parallel to the shear plane), but also the so called perpendicular orientation (with layer normals along the vorticity direction) at the condition of higher shear frequencies and near the lamellar phase transition. We find that three-dimensional simulations of a deterministic mesoscopic dynamical equation (without thermal fluctuations) under the convection of simple shear flows have shown exactly such a dependence. The simulations show the important role played by the transverse orientation (layer normal along the velocity direction) and highlight the mechanism of the shear alignment being the competition between the shear frequency and the mesoscopic time scale of pattern organization.