Homothermal acceleration waves in nematic liquid crystals

The aim of this paper is the study of propagation of acceleration waves of arbitrary shape in nematic liquid crystals. The development of balance equation reduced to singular surface and the application of HadamardÕs theorem permit to obtain the speeds and the conditions of propagation of the acceleration waves. Di€erential equations that describe the modi®cations of the metric and topological properties of the wave during the propagation are deduced in function of kinematical descriptors of the continuum and its thermodynamical state. The deduction of the coecients of evolution equation for the amplitude of the jump concludes the paper