Center Seminars & Workshops

The Canham-Helfrich energy is widely used in mathematical and physical descriptions of bilayer membranes. In 2000, Hamm and Kozlov gave the first continuum mechanical derivation accounting for lipid bilayer microstructure, and improvements have been offered over the past decade by Terzi and Deserno, and Pinigin et al. The prevailing approach calculates strain using the tangent frame of the bilayer surface. As we show, a director frame greatly simplifies the calculations, and resolves outstanding questions such as whether the twist deformation contributes to elastic energy.