English

Screening, Hyperuniformity, and Instability in the Sedimentation of Irregular Objects

Soft Condensed Matter 2017-05-03 v2 Statistical Mechanics Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

We study the overdamped sedimentation of non-Brownian objects of irregular shape using fluctuating hydrodynamics. The anisotropic response of the objects to flow, caused by their tendency to align with gravity, directly suppresses concentration and velocity fluctuations. This allows the suspension to avoid the anomalous fluctuations predicted for suspensions of symmetric spheroids. The suppression of concentration fluctuations leads to a correlated, hyperuniform structure. For certain object shapes, the anisotropic response may act in the opposite direction, destabilizing uniform sedimentation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.08632,
  title  = {Screening, Hyperuniformity, and Instability in the Sedimentation of Irregular Objects},
  author = {Tomer Goldfriend and Haim Diamant and Thomas A. Witten},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.08632},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

12 pages (6 main text + 6 supplemental material); 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:35:10.837Z