Related papers: Viscous control of peeling an elastic sheet by ben…
Conforming materials to rigid substrates with Gaussian curvature --- positive for spheres and negative for saddles --- has proven a versatile tool to guide the self-assembly of defects such as scars, pleats, folds, blisters, and liquid…
A recent study has demonstrated that phase separation in binary liquid mixtures is arrested in the presence of elastic networks and can lead to a nearly uniformly-sized distribution of the dilute-phase droplets. At longer timescales, these…
We propose an approach to describe the propagation of a crack (or boundary of an adhesive contact) in a viscoelastic material which is only based on the consideration of the rheology of the material without the introduction of any…
In jamming systems like colloids, emulsions, foams, and biological tissues, significant deformation is essential for processes such as material scraping or wound self-healing. To adequately spread a foam or cream over a surface, external…
Measuring the rheology of liquids typically requires precise control over shear rates and stresses. Here, we describe an alternative route for predicting the characteristic features of a power-law fluid by simply observing the capillary…
When a more mobile fluid displaces another immiscible one in a porous medium, viscous fingering propagates with a partial sweep, which hinders oil recovery and soil remedy. We experimentally investigate the feasibility of tuning such…
We report a comprehensive investigation of a model for peeling of an adhesive tape along with a nonlinear time series analysis of experimental acoustic emission signals in an effort to understand the origin of intermittent peeling of an…
We consider a thin elastic sheet adhering to a stiff substrate by means of the surface tension of a thin liquid layer. Debonding is initiated by imposing a vertical displacement at the centre of the sheet and leads to the formation of a…
Diffusion of particles in complex fluids and gels is difficult to describe and often lies beyond the scope of the classical Stokes-Einstein relation. One of the main lines of research over the past few decades has sought to relate…
The miscible displacement of a shear-thinning fluid by another of same rheological properties is studied experimentally in a transparent fracture by an optical technique imaging relative concentration distributions. The fracture walls have…
We study the spreading of viscous and viscoelastic drops on solid substrates with different wettability. In the early stages of spreading, we find that the viscoelastic drop spreads with faster and a different power law than the Newtonian…
We study the elastic deformations in a cross-linked polymer network film triggered by the binding of submicron particles with a sticky surface, mimicking the interactions of viral pathogens with thin films of stimulus-responsive polymeric…
Eukaryotic cells adhere to extracellular matrix during the normal development of the organism, forming static adhesion as well as during cell motility. We study this process by considering a simplified coarse-grained model of a vesicle that…
Thin-film dewetting is classically governed by an adhesion-mediated spinodal instability in which curvature-driven diffusion controls post-rupture coarsening. We show that internal activity fundamentally restructures this instability. Using…
A paradigm for the study of wrinkling in elastic sheet is the Lam\'{e} configuration, in which azimuthal wrinkles form in an annular sheet subjected to tensile loads at both edges. Since wrinkles are spatially extended, this instability…
We examine transient axial creeping flow in the annular gap between a rigid cylinder and a concentric elastic tube. The gap is initially filled with a thin fluid layer. The study focuses on viscous-elastic time-scales for which the rate of…
We combine experiments with simulations to investigate the fluid-structure interaction of a flexible helical rod rotating in a viscous fluid, under low Reynolds number conditions. Our analysis takes into account the coupling between the…
The deformation of thin rods in a viscous liquid is central to the mechanics of motility in cells ranging from \textit{Escherichia coli} to sperm. Here we use experiments and theory to study the shape transition of a flexible rod rotating…
The propagation of waves in soft dielectric elastomer layers is investigated. To this end incremental motions superimposed on homogeneous finite deformations induced by bias electric fields and pre-stretch are determined. First we examine…
The propulsion of many eukaryotic cells is generated by flagella, flexible slender filaments that are actively oscillating in space and time. The dynamics of these biological appendages have inspired the design of many types of artificial…