This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications AMORPHOUS POLYMERS AND NON-NEWTONIAN FLUIDS is in part the proceedings of a workshop which was an integral part of the 1984-85 IMA program on CONTINUUM PHYSICS AND PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS We are grateful to the Scientific Committee: Haim Brezis Constantine Dafermos Jerry Eri cksen David Kinderlehrer for planning and implementing an exciting and stimulating year-long program. We espe cially thank the Program Organizers, Jerry Ericksen, David Kinderlehrer, Stephen Prager and Matthew Tirrell for organizing a workshop which brought together scientists and mathematicians in a variety of areas for a fruitful exchange of ideas. George R. Sell Hans Weinberger Preface The diversity of experimental phenomena and the range of applications of liquid crystals present timely and challenging questions for experimentalists, mechanists, and mathematicians. The scope of this workshop was to bring together research workers and practitioners in these areas from laboratories, industry, and universities to explore common issues. The contents of this volume vary from descriptions of experimental phenomena, of which our understanding is insufficient, to questions of a mathematical nature and of efficient computation.

InhaltsangabeRheological and Rheo-Optical Studies with Nematogenic Solutions of a Rodlike Polymer: A Review of Data on Poly (Phenylene Benzobisthiazole).- Liquid Crystals and Energy Estimates for S2-Valued Maps.- On Virtual Inertia Effects During Diffusion of a Dispersed Medium in a Suspension.- Degenerate Harmonic Maps and Liquid Crystals.- A Review of Cholesteric Blue Phases.- Minimum Energy Configurations for Liquid Crystals: Computational Results.- The Flow of Two Immiscible Liquids Through a Porous Medium: Regularity of the Saturation.- Molecular Theory for the Nonlinear Viscoelasticity of Polymeric Liquid Crystals.- Mathematical Questions of Liquid Crystal Theory.- The Effect of the Magnitude of the Disordered Phase Temperature Range on the Given Phase Transition in Liquid Crystals.- Some Topics in Equilibrium Theory of Liquid Crystals.- Theory of Flow Phenomena in Nematic Liquid Crystals.- A Model for Disclinations in Nematic Liquid Crystals.- Some Remarks About a Free Boundary Type Problem.- Computer Simulation of Flow of Liquid Crystal Polymers.- Theory of the Blue Phases of Chiral Nematic Liquid Crystals.- On the Global Structure of Solutions to Some Semi linear Elliptic Problems.- Information About Other Volumes in this Program.