Kayaking and wagging of rigid rod-like colloids in shear flow

In this thesis we report on Brownian dynamics simulations of colloidal suspensions of rigid spherocylinders in shear flow. A widely investigated topic, rod-like liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs) in the nematic phase arouse much scientific interest, both theoretically and experimentally, not only due to the spectacular collective orientational motions that these systems perform under shear but also due to the peculiar rheological properties compared to those of the isotropic phase. The goal of our study is to simulate and to understand the dynamical and rheological behavior exhibited in shear flow. Our simulated systems are based on the fd virus, because this slightly flexible nearly monodisperse biopolymer is considered a convenient experimental representative for a rigid rod-like particle.