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The settling dynamics of falling spheres inside a Laponite suspension is studied. Laponite is a colloidal synthetic clay that shows physical aging in aqueous suspension due to the spontaneous evolution of inter-particle electrostatic…
Soft materials such as colloidal suspensions, polymer solutions and liquid crystals are constituted by mesoscopic entities held together by weak forces. Their mechanical moduli are several orders of magnitude lower than those of atomic…
We present the results of an experimental investigation into buoyant rigid spheres rising through highly concentrated collections of hydrated hydrogel particles. The volume fraction of particles is such that the mechanical properties of the…
We investigate the nonlinear rheological behavior of colloidal suspensions of Laponite, a synthetic clay, driven by a steady and homogeneous shear strain. We show that the external drive leads to a drastic slowing down of the aging dynamics…
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…
The gelation of water suspension of a synthetic clay (Laponite) has been studied by dynamic light scattering in a wide range of clay weight concentration (Cw = 0.003-0.031). At variance with previous determination, indicating a stable…
We have investigated the drag on a sphere falling through a clay suspension that has a yield stress and exhibits rheological aging. The drag force increases with both speed and the rest time between preparation of the system and the start…
Shear localization in an aqueous clay suspension of Laponite is investigated through dynamic light scattering, which provides access both to the dynamics of the system (homodyne mode) and to the local velocity profile (heterodyne mode).…
We have studied the flow induced by a macroscopic spherical particle settling in a Laponite suspension that exhibits a yield-stress, thixotropy and shear-thinning. We show that the fluid thixotropy (or aging) induces an increase with time…
Spontaneous motion of an oil droplet driven by chemical nonequilibricity is reported. It is shown that the droplet undergoes regular rhythmic motion under appropriately designed boundary conditions, whereas it exhibits random motion in an…
Starch solutions, which are strongly non-Newtonian, show a surface instability, when subjected to a load. A droplet of the fluid is sandwiched between two glass plates and a weight varying from 1 to 5 kgs. is placed on the top plate. The…
From the mesoscopic point of view, a new concept of soft matching for mass points is proposed. Then a soft Lasso's approach to learn the soft dynamical equation for the physical mechanical relationship is proposed, too. Furthermore, a…
In this work we study onset of nonlinear rheological behavior of a colloidal dispersion of a synthetic hectorite clay, Laponite, at the critical gel state while undergoing sol-gel transition. When subjected to step strain in the nonlinear…
Liquid migration in active soft solids is a very common phenomenon in Nature at different scales: from cells to leaves. It can be caused by mechanical as well as chemical actions. The work focuses on the migration of liquid provoked by…
A sheet of glassy polymers placed in a solvent shows swelling behaviors quite different from that of soft polymers (rubbers and gels). (1) Non-Fickian diffusion (called case II diffusion): As solvent permeates into the sample, a sharp front…
Strongly non-Newtonian fluids namely, aqueous gels of starch, are shown to exhibit visco-elastic behavior, when subjected to a load. We study arrowroot and potato starch gels. When a droplet of the fluid is sandwiched between two glass…
Swimming in low-Reynolds-number fluids requires the breaking of time-reversal symmetry and centrosymmetry. Microswimmers, often with asymmetric shapes, exhibit nonreciprocal motions or exploit nonequilibrium processes to propel. The role of…
The rimming flow of a viscoelastic thin film inside a rotating horizontal cylinder is studied theoretically. Attention is given to the onset of non-Newtonian free-surface instability in creeping flow. This non-inertial instability has been…
We investigate the motion of a suspended non-Brownian sphere past a fixed cylindrical or spherical obstacle in the limit of zero Reynolds number for arbitrary particle-obstacle aspect ratios. We consider both a suspended sphere moving in a…
We present an experimental study of the motion of a solid sphere falling through a wormlike micellar fluid. While smaller or lighter spheres quickly reach a terminal velocity, larger or heavier spheres are found to oscillate in the…