A symposium held in Durham in July 1995 brought together an international collection of key mathematicians, theoretical physicists and experimentalists in the areas of liquid crystals and polymeric systems. Many of the participants met together for the first time, and the symposium stimulated new collaborative interactions among applied mathematicians and others who, prior to this meeting, were working separately on either liquid crystals or polymer fluids. The symposium also enhanced further interchanges of ideas between industry and academia. The flavour of this meeting is captured by the contents of this special issue which resulted from presentations given by invited speakers.

The motion of an initially circular drop of viscous fluid surrounded by inviscid fluid in a Hele-Shaw cell withdrawn from an eccentric point sink is considered. Using a numerical algorithm based on a boundary integral equation, the solution for small, finite surface tension is observed. It is found that the zero-surface-tension formation of a cusp is avoided, and instead a narrow finger of inviscid fluid forms, which then rapidly propagates towards the sink. The scaling of the finger in the sink vicinity is determined.

We present two new models describing the dynamic behavior of an automotive thermostat, involving delay-differential equations with hysteresis. Existence, uniqueness, and regularity of the solutions for both models are obtained by a continuation argument. We establish sufficient conditions for the models to exhibit intrinsic oscillations. We also present an algorithm for numerical approximations of the solutions and give some representative numerical simulations. These reveal a rather interesting dynamical behavior of the solutions.

The bifurcation from a normally conducting state to a superconducting state in a decreasing magnetic field is studied for a slab geometry. The leading eigenvalue is a double eigenvalue, leading to a rich structure of possible behaviours. A weakly-nonlinear stability analysis is performed, and the possible responses of the material are classified. Finally, the leading-order equations are solved numerically for a wide range of parameter values to determine which of these behaviours will occur in practice.

We consider in this paper the classical one-phase Stefan problem in dimensions two and three in the undercooled situation. By means of matched asymptotic expansions, a mechanism of cusp formation is presented for interfaces that are initially smooth.

We consider the two-dimensional quasi-steady Stokes flow of an incompressible Newtonian fluid occupying a time-dependent simply-connected region bounded by a free surface, the motion being driven solely by a constant surface tension acting at the free boundary. Of particular concern here are such flows that start from an initial configuration with the fluid occupying an array of touching circular disks. We show that, when there are N such disks in a general position, the evolution of the fluid region is described by a conformal map involving 2N−1 time-dependent parameters whose variation is governed by N invariants and N−1 first order differential equations. When N=2, or when the problem enjoys some special features of symmetry, the moving boundary of the fluid domain during the motion can be determined by solving purely algebraic equations, the solution of a single differential equation being needed only to link a particular boundary shape to a particular time. The analysis is aided by exploiting a connection with Hele-Shaw free boundary flows when the zero-surface-tension model is employed. If the initial configuration for the Stokes flow problem can be produced by injection (or suction) at N points into an initially empty Hele-Shaw cell, as can the N-disk configuration referred to above, then so can all later configurations; the points where the fluid must be injected move, but the amount to be injected at each of the N points remains invariant. The efficacy of our solution procedure is illustrated by a number of examples, and we exploit the method to show that the free boundary in such a Stokes flow driven by surface tension alone may pass through a cusped state.

We give a review of theoretical studies of Freedericksz transitions in smectic C liquid crystals due to the application of magnetic and electric fields. The relevance of these results and their connection with experimentation is also discussed.

The onset of shear-banding in a deforming elastoplastic solid has been linked to change of type of the governing partial differential equations. If uniform material properties are assumed, then (i) deformations prior to shear-banding are uniform, and (ii) the onset of shear-banding occurs simultaneously at all points in the sample. In this paper we study, in the context of a model for anti-plane shearing of a granular material, the effect of a small variation in material properties (e.g. in yield strength) within the sample. Using matched asymptotic expansions, we find that (i) the deformation is extremely non-uniform in a short time period immediately preceding the formation of shear-bands; and (ii) generically, a shear-band forms at a single location in the sample.

The dynamics of blobs of viscous fluid in a non-planar Hele–Shaw cell is considered. The general approach developed by Richardson and some of the resulting analytic techniques are extended to flows in non-planar cells, including cells shaped as surfaces of revolution and helical surfaces. An example related to the development and coalescence of two initially separated blobs in a cell on a spherical surface is presented. Some applications to mathematically equivalent problems dealing with planar Hele–Shaw cells with a non-uniform gap and flows through porous media are also discussed.

A standard model for one-dimensional phase transitions is the second-order semilinear equation with bistable nonlinearity, where one seeks a solution which connects the two stable values. From an Ising-like model but which includes long-range interaction, one is led to consider the equation where the second-order operator is replaced by one of arbitrarily high order. Others have found the desired heteroclinic solutions for such equations, under the assumption that the higher-order terms have small coefficients, by employing singular perturbation methods for dynamical systems. Here, without making any assumption on the sizes of the coefficients, we obtain such heteroclinic solutions by using variational methods under the assumption that the nonlinearity arises from a potential having two wells of equal depths.

A blob of viscous Newtonian fluid is surrounded by inviscid fluid and sandwiched in the narrow gap between two plane parallel surfaces, so that initially its plan view occupies a simply connected domain. Recently Entov, Etingoff & Kleinbock (1993) produced some steady-state solutions for the blob placed in a quadrupole driven flow, and including the effects of surface tension. Here a numerical solution of the time-dependent problem using a Boundary Integral algorithm finds that for low values of the flow rate there exist two solutions. We find that one, which is close in shape to a circle, is stable, while the other, more deformed equilibrium, is unstable. The analysis also reveals that for certain flow strengths stable non-convex shapes also exist. If the flow strength is too large no stable equilibrium is possible.

The Ginzburg–Landau model for superconductivity is examined in the one-dimensional case. First, putting the Ginzburg–Landau parameter κ formally equal to infinity, the existence of a minimizer of this reduced Ginzburg–Landau energy is proved. Then asymptotic behaviour for large κ of minimizers of the full Ginzburg–Landau energy is analysed and different convergence results are obtained, according to the exterior magnetic field. Numerical computations illustrate the various behaviours.

The probability density for the solution yn of a stochastic difference equation is considered. Following Knessl et al. [1], it is shown to satisfy a master equation, which is solved asymptotically for large values of the index n. The method is illustrated by deriving the large deviation results for a sum of independent identically distributed random variables and for the joint density of two dependent sums. Then it is applied to a difference approximation to the Helmholtz equation in a random medium. A large deviation result is obtained for the probability density of the decay rate of a solution of this equation. Both the exponent and the pre-exponential factor are determined.

The theorem of bifurcation from a simple eigenvalue is applied to prove non-uniqueness for the problem of a layer of a dielectric liquid subjected to an electric field and to injection of charges on the electrodes.

Following our preceding papers [1, 2] concerning semi-infinite superconducting films, we consider new a priori estimates on the exterior magnetic field h=A′(0), when (f, A) is a solution of the corresponding Ginzburg–Landau system. The main new results concern the limit as κ→∞, but we prove also the existence of a finite superheating field. We also discuss recent results [3] concerning the superheating field in the large κ limit, and show how to relate these formal solutions to suitable subsolutions and supersolutions giving the existence of a solution for h<1/√2 and κ large enough. We also analyse the same problem by variational techniques and get the existence of a locally stable solution for h<1/√2 and any κ>0.

Many elastodynamic solutions exist for wave interactions with defects upon or within an elastic half space bounded above by a vacuum. The aim of this paper is to significantly widen the scope of these solutions by showing that they can be directly utilized, when the vacuum is replaced by a fluid, to find the leading order acoustic (or elastic) responses in the light fluid-loading limit. Using the procedure developed here one can take virtually any elastodynamic solution and use it to generate the leading-order solution for a fluid-loaded elastic solid.

A thin-film approximation is used in an analysis of the flow of a thin trickle of viscous fluid down a near-vertical plane. An approximate similarity solution is obtained, representing essentially a source (or sink) flow. Several interpretations of the solution are discussed.

We consider a chiral smectic C liquid crystal confined between parallel plates in the bookshelf geometry. Using a recently proposed continuum theory for such materials the behaviour of the cell is discussed when an electric field is applied and subsequently removed from the cell. We examine both symmetric and asymmetric boundary conditions for the director.

We prove that the thin film equation ht+div (hn grad (Δh))=0 in dimension d[ges ]2 has a unique C1 source-type radial self-similar non-negative solution if 0<n<3 and has no solution of this type if n[ges ]3. When 0<n3 the solution h has finite speed of propagation and we obtain the first order asymptotic behaviour of h at the interface or free boundary separating the regions where h>0 and h=0. (The case d=1 was already known [1]).

The problem of steady-state propagation of a finger or a bubble of inviscid fluid through a Hele–Shaw cell filled by a viscous non-Newtonian, including visco-plastic (Bingham) fluid is addressed. Only flows symmetric relative to the cell axis are considered. It is shown that, using a hodograph transform, this non-linear free boundary problem can be reduced to the solution of an elliptic system of linear partial differential equations in a fixed domain with part of the boundary being curvilinear. The resulting boundary-value problem is solved numerically using the Finite Element Method. Finger shapes are calculated, and the approach is verified for one-parameter family of solutions which correspond to the well-known Saffman–Taylor solutions for the case of a Hele–Shaw cell filled by a Newtonian fluid. Results are also shown for fingers with non-Newtonian fluids. In the case of a cell filled by visco-plastic (Bingham) fluid, it is shown that stagnant zones propagate with the finger, and that the rear part of the finger has constant width. The same approach is applied to finding a two-parametric family of solutions for steady propagating bubbles. Results are shown for bubbles in Hele–Shaw cell filled by power-law and Bingham fluids.