Related papers: Effects of strongly selective additives on volume …
We present a two-dimensional mesoscopic model of a yield stress material that includes the possibility of local volume fluctuations coupled to shear, in such a way that the shear strength of the material decreases as the local density…
Confinement can have a dramatic effect on the behavior of all sorts of particulate systems and it therefore is an important phenomenon in many different areas of physics and technology. Here, we investigate the role played by the softness…
We study the theoretical phase behavior of an asymmetric binary mixture of hard spheres, of which the smaller component is monodisperse and the larger component is polydisperse. The interactions are modelled in terms of the second virial…
Controlling flow-induced segregation in a granular mixture is highly relevant to many industrial settings. To enhance mixing or promote segregation, the continuous gravity flow of a bidisperse granular mixture through a series of narrow…
The role of solvent quality in determining the universal material properties of dilute polymer solutions undergoing steady simple shear flow is examined. A bead-spring chain representation of the polymer molecule is used, and the influence…
Polymer brush layers are responsive materials that swell in contact with good solvents and their vapors. We deposit drops of an almost completely wetting volatile oil onto an oleophilic polymer brush layer and follow the response of the…
Combining elastic incoherent neutron scattering and differential scanning calorimetry, we investigate the occurrence of the volume phase transition (VPT) in very concentrated PNIPAM microgel suspensions, from a polymer weight fraction of…
We propose an improved effective-medium theory to obtain the concentration dependence of the viscosity of particle suspensions at arbitrary volume fractions. Our methodology can be applied, in principle, to any particle shape as long as the…
We use a microscopic density functional theory based on Wertheim's first order thermodynamic perturbation theory to study wetting behavior of athermal mixtures of colloids and excluded-volume polymers. In opposition to the wetting behavior…
Performing light scattering experiments we show that introducing short-ranged attraction to a colloidal suspension of nearly hard spheres by addition of free polymer produces new glass transition phenomena. We observe a dramatic…
We present a statistical model of a dilute polymer solution in good solvent in the presence of low-molecular weight cosolvent. We investigate the conformational changes of the polymer induced by a change of the cosolvent concentration and…
The toughness of a polymer material can increase significantly if two networks are combined into one material. This toughening effect is a consequence of a transition from a brittle to a ductile failure response. Although this transition…
The phenomenon of drag reduction by polymer additives had been studied in simulations on the basis of non-Newtonian fluid mechanical models that take into account the field of polymer extension (conformation tensor) and its interaction with…
Many microorganisms swim through gels, materials with nonzero zero-frequency elastic shear modulus, such as mucus. Biological gels are typically heterogeneous, containing both a structural scaffold (network) and a fluid solvent. We analyze…
We numerically study the dynamics of a passive fluid droplet confined within a microchannel whose walls are covered with a thin layer of active gel. The latter represents a fluid of extensile material modelling, for example, a suspension of…
The structure of polydisperse hard sphere fluids, in the presence of a wall, is studied by the Rosenfeld density functional theory. Within this approach, the local excess free energy depends on only four combinations of the full set of…
In the vicinity of their glass transition, dense colloidal suspensions acquire elastic properties over experimental timescales. We investigate the possibility of a visco-elastic flow instability in curved geometry for such materials. To…
Theoretical considerations based on chain connectivity and conformational variability of polymers have lead to an uncomplicated relation for the dependence of the Flory-Huggins interaction parameter, chi, on the volume fraction of the…
A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…
We investigate, using numerical simulations and analytical arguments, a simple one dimensional model for the swelling or the collapse of a closed polymer chain of size N, representing the dynamical evolution of a polymer in a \Theta-solvent…