In this talk I will develop a general theory for active fluids which involve converting chemical energy into various type of mechanical energy. This is the extension of the classical energetic variational approaches for mechanical systems. The methods will cover a wide range of both chemical reaction kenetics and mechanical processes. Here we will focus on applications in micellar polymer solutions and muscle contractions.

This is a joint project with many collaborators, in particular, Bob Eisenberg, Yiwei Wang and Tengfei Zhang.