Related papers: Simulating defect textures on coalescing nematic s…

When two liquid drops touch, a microscopic connecting liquid bridge forms and rapidly grows as the two drops merge into one. Whereas coalescence has been thoroughly studied when drops coalesce in vacuum or air, many important situations…

Liquid shells (e.g. double emulsions, vesicles etc.) are susceptible to interfacial instability and rupturing when driven out of mechanical equilibrium. This poses a significant challenge for the design of liquid shell based micro-machines,…

Using agent-based simulations of self-propelled particles subject to short-range repulsion and nematic alignment we explore the dynamical phases of a dense active material confined to the surface of a sphere. We map the dynamical phase…

The emergence of new techniques for the fabrication of nematic droplets with nontrivial topology provides new routes for the assembly of responsive devices. Here we perform a numerical study of spherical nematic droplets on fibres. We…

Much recent progress has been made in the study of nematic solids, both glassy and elastomeric, particularly in the realm of stress-free, defect-driven deformation in thin sheets of material. In this paper we consider a subset of texture…

Topological defects are one of the most conspicuous features of liquid crystals. In two dimensional nematics, they have been shown to behave effectively as particles with both, charge and orientation, which dictate their interactions. Here,…

Numerical simulations of the evolution of a global topological defect field have two characteristic length scales --- one macrophysical, of order the field correlation length, and the other microphysical, of order the field width. The…

The coalescence of viscous drops on a substrate is studied experimentally and theoretically. We consider cases where the drops can have different contact angles, leading to a very asymmetric coalescence process. Side view experiments reveal…

Topological defects in active liquid crystals can be confined by introducing gradients of activity. Here, we examine the dynamical behavior of two defects confined by a sharp gradient of activity that separates an active circular region and…

Motivated by recent experiments on biomimetic membranes exposed to several aqueous phases, we theoretically study the morphology of a membrane in contact with a liquid droplet formed via aqueous phase separation. We concentrate on membranes…

Collectively moving cellular systems often contain a proportion of dead cells or non-motile genotypes. When mixed, nematically aligning motile and non-motile agents are known to segregate spontaneously. However, the role that topological…

Droplet coalescence is a common phenomenon and plays an important role in multi-disciplinary applications. Previous studies mainly consider the coalescence of miscible liquid, even though the coalescence of immiscible droplets on a solid…

As the cover of embryos and adult organisms, epithelial tissues are subjected to substantial mechanical forces in tissue morphogenesis. However, the finite deformation behaviors of epithelial tissues remain largely unexplored. This study…

The dynamics of two liquid droplets coalescing in their saturated vapor phase are investigated by Lattice Boltzmann numerical simulations. Attention is paid to the effect of the vapor phase on the formation and growth dynamics of the liquid…

Nematic solids respond strongly to changes in ambient heat or light, significantly differently parallel and perpendicular to the director. This phenomenon is well characterized for uniform director fields, but not for defect textures. We…

We perform finite element simulations to study the impact of defect-defect interactions on the pressure-induced buckling of thin, elastic, spherical shells containing two dimpled imperfections. Throughout, we quantify the critical buckling…

Recent experimental observations have suggested that topological defects can facilitate the creation of sharp features in developing embryos. Whereas these observations echo established knowledge about the interplay between geometry and…

We study a continuum model of an extensile active nematic to show that mesoscale turbulence develops in two stages: (i) ordered regions undergo an intrinsic hydrodynamic instability generating walls, lines of stong bend deformations, (ii)…

Fluid phase equilibria involving nano-dispersed phases, where at least one of the coexisting phases is confined to a small volume, are investigated by molecular dynamics simulation. Complementing previous studies on nanoscopic droplets,…

Topological defects are singularities in material fields that play a vital role across a range of systems: from cosmic microwave background polarization to superconductors, and biological materials. Although topological defects and their…