A continuum tensorial theory was formulated to describe the isothermal, incompressible flow
of uniaxial rodlike nematic liquid crystalline polymers. The tensor theory was reduced to a
vector theory that describes the microstructure of the uniaxial phase by specifying the
director orientation and the scalar order parameter. The reduction establishes useful
relationships between this theory and the Leslie and Ericksen theory. The model was solved
for a given steady simple shear flow, assuming spatial homogeneity. Two types of orienting …