Computer Simulations of Liquid Crystals and Polymers (NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Computational Methods for Polymers and Liquid Crystalline Polymers)

Hardcover, xv + 364 pages, NOT ex-library. Very good interior, clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Short closed edge-nicks in the lower outer corners of the boards. Issued without a dust jacket. -- Liquid crystals, polymers and polymer liquid crystals are soft condensed matter systems of major technological and scientific interest. An understanding of the macroscopic properties of these complex systems and of their many and interesting peculiarities at the molecular level can nowadays only be attained using computer simulations and statistical mechanical theories. Both in the Liquid Crystal and Polymer fields a considerable amount of simulation work has been done in the last few years with various classes of models at different special resolutions, ranging from atomistic to molecular and coarse-grained lattice models. Each of the two fields has developed its own set of tools and specialized procedures and the book aims to provide a state of the art review of the computer simulation studies of polymers and liquid crystals. This is of great importance in view of a potential cross-fertilization between these connected areas which is particularly apparent for a number of experimental systems like, e.g. polymer liquid crystals and anisotropic gels where the different fields necessarily merge. An effort has been made to assess the possibilities of a coherent description of the themes that have developed independently, and to compare and extend the theoretical and computational techniques put forward in the different areas. -- Contents: 1. Lattice Spin Models of Polymer-Dispersed Liquid Crystals; 2. Nematics with Dispersed Polymer Networks: From Lattice Spin Models to Experimental Observables; 3. Computer Simulations of Liquid Crystal Polymers and Dendrimers; 4. Monte Carlo Simulations of Liquids of Mesogenic Oligomers; 5. Molecular Arrangements in Polymer-Nanofiller Systems; 6. Dissipative Particle Dynamics Approach to Nematic Polymers; 7. Some Things We Can Learn from Chemically Realistic Polymer Melt Simulations; 8. Monte Carlo Simulations of Semi-Flexible Polymers; 9. Macromolecular Mobility and Internal Viscosity. The Role of Stereoregularity; 10. Protein Adsorption on a Hydrophobic Graphite Surface; 11. Multiscale Simulation of Liquid Crystals; 12. Polymer Chains and Networks in Narrow Slits; 13. Rotation and Deformation of Polymer Molecules in Solutions Subjected to a Shear Flow; 14. Regular and Chaotic Rheological Behavior of Tumbling Polymeric Liquid Crystals; 15. Parallel Computer Simulation Techniques for the Study of Macromolecules.