On liquid crystal flows with free-slip boundary conditions

In this paper, we study a coupled dynamic system describing nematic liquid crystal flows. The system was motivated by the Ericksen-Leslie equations modeling the flow of nematic liquid crystals. The purpose of studying the simplified system is to understand the flow properties of more complicated materials, the material configurations , as well as the interactions between them. Unlike in the previous studies where the Dirichlet boundary conditions are prescribed, we consider here the free-slip boundary conditions which possess a number of distinct advantages. The results in this paper form the analytical background for the forthcoming numerical simulations of the system.