Related papers: Effects of strongly selective additives on volume …
The permeability of certain polymer membranes with impenetrable nanoinclusions increases with the particle volume fraction (Merkel et al., Science, 296, 2002). This intriguing observation contradicts even qualitative expectations based on…
The elastic properties of a soft matter material can be greatly altered by the presence of solid inclusions whose microscopic properties, such as their size and interactions, can have a dramatic effect. In order to shed light on these…
We investigate the shear elastic modulus of soft polymer foams loaded with hard spherical particles and we show that, for constant bubble size and gas volume fraction, strengthening is strongly dependent on the size of those inclusions.…
We present experimental evidence that a minute amount of polymer additives can significantly enhance heat transport in the bulk region of turbulent thermal convection. The effects of polymer additives are found to be the…
Viscoelastic and thermodynamic properties of transient gels formed by telechelic polymers are studied on the basis of the transient network theory that takes account of the correlation among polymer chains via network junctions. The global…
We study the behavior of a flexible polymer chain in the presence of a low-molecular weight solvent in the vicinity of a liquid-gas critical point within the framework of a self-consistent field theory. The total free energy of the dilute…
Rheological measurements of model colloidal gels reveal that large variations in the shear moduli as colloidal volume-fraction changes are not reflected by simple structural parameters such as the coordination number, which remains almost a…
By means of Langevin dynamics simulations, we investigate the gel formation of randomly functionalized polymers in solution, with the ability to form both intra- and intermolecular reversible bonds. Under highly dilute conditions, these…
The sol-gel transition (SGT), upon which the infinite cluster (IC) of thermoreversibly bonded particles (gel fraction) appears against a background of a set of finite clusters (sol fraction), is first quantitatively considered with due…
Physically assembled gels have promising applications in many fields because of their tunable mechanical properties. Here, we report the mechanical properties as a function of polymer volume fraction ($\phi$) for a physical gel system…
The formation of colloidal gels is strongly dependent on the volume fraction of the system and the strength of the interactions between the colloids. Here we explore very dilute solutions by the means of numerical simulations, and show…
We examine how the distribution of contour lengths and the high-stretch stiffening of individual chain segments affect the macroscopic shear modulus of flexible polymer gels, using a 2D numerical model, in which polymer segments form a…
Understanding the role of self-propulsion on the conformational properties of active filamentous objects has relevance in biology. In this context, we consider a flexible bead-spring model polymer for which along with both attractive and…
We study the effect of varying the mass and volume fraction of a suspension of rigid spheres dispersed in a turbulent channel flow. We performed several Direct Numerical Simulations using an Immersed Boundary Method for finite-size…
We study swelling and structural properties of ionic microgel suspensions within a comprehensive coarse-grained model that combines the polymeric and colloidal natures of microgels as permeable, compressible, charged spheres governed by…
By tracking small particles in the bulk of an intensely turbulent flow, we show that even a very small concentration of long-chain polymers disrupts the usual turbulent energy cascade. The polymers affect scales much larger than their…
We have studied the conformational and scaling behaviors of a flexible dendrimer immersed in athermal or good solvents. A self-consistent field theory combined with a pre-averaged excluded volume potential representing the two-body…
The effects of elasticity on filament thinning and breakup are investigated in microchannel cross flow. When a viscous solution is stretched by an external immiscible fluid, a low 100 ppm polymer concentration strongly affects the breakup…
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…
When injected through a contraction, high molecular weight polymer solutions exhibit a sharp increase of apparent viscosity which originates from stretching polymer chains above a critical extension rate. This chain stretching can also…