  We have performed Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the temperature
dependence of the ordering of the side chains of the X-shape liquid crystal
molecules which are arranged in a hexagonal array. Each hexagon contains six
side chains, one from each side of the hexagon. Each liquid crystal molecule
has two, dissimilar, side chains, one that contains silicon and one containing
fluorine. Like chains attract each other more strongly than unlike chains and
this drives an order-disorder transition. The system is frustrated because it
is not possible to find a configuration in which all the hexagons are occupied
by either all silicon or all fluorine chains. There are two phase transitions.
If only pairwise interactions are included it is found that there is a novel
fluctuating phase between the disordered phase and the fully ordered ground
state. This did not agree with the experiments where an intermediate phase was
seen that had long range order on one of the three sublattices. Agreement was
found when the calculations were modified to include attractive three body
interactions between the silicon chains.
