Interaction of liquid crystals with a rigid body

Abstract

This article investigates the interaction of nematic liquid crystals modeled by a simplified Ericksen-Leslie model with a rigid body. It is shown that this problem is locally strongly well-posed, and that it also admits a unique, global strong solution for initial data close to constant equilibria. The proof of the global strong solution relies on a new splitting method for the director in a mean value zero and average part.