Related papers: Viscoelastic and elastomeric active matter: Linear…
We briefly review the recent advances in the rheology of entangled polymers and identify emerging research trends and outstanding challenges, especially with respect to branched polymers. Emphasis is placed on the role of well-characterized…
We experimentally investigate the flow of a viscoelastic fluid in a parallel shear geometry at low Reynolds number. As the flow becomes unstable via a nonlinear subcritical instability, velocimetry measurements show non-periodic…
Fluid transport in microfluidic systems typically is laminar due to the low Reynolds number characteristic of the flow. The inclusion of suspended polymers imparts elasticity to fluids, allowing instabilities to be excited when substantial…
We use numerical simulations to investigate the hydrodynamic behavior of the interface between nematic (N) and isotropic (I) phases of a confined active liquid crystal. At low activities, a stable interface with constant shape and velocity…
We study the necking dynamics of a filament of complex fluid or soft solid in uniaxial tensile stretching at constant imposed Hencky strain rate $\dot\varepsilon$, by means of linear stability analysis and nonlinear (slender filament)…
We consider a phenomenological continuum model for an active nematic fluid and show a universal, model independent, instability which renders the homogeneous nematic state unstable to order fluctuations. Using numerical and analytic tools…
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…
The interplay of inertia and elasticity is shown to have a significant impact on the transport of filamentary objects, modelled by bead-spring chains, in a two-dimensional turbulent flow. We show how elastic interactions amongst inertial…
A modal stability analysis shows that pressure-driven pipe flow of an Oldroyd-B fluid is linearly unstable to axisymmetric perturbations, in stark contrast to its Newtonian counterpart which is linearly stable at all Reynolds numbers. The…
We model polydomain liquid-crystal elastomers by extending the neo-classical soft and semi-soft free energies used successfully to describe monodomain samples. We show that there is a significant difference between polydomains cross-linked…
The sliding of non-Newtonian drops down planar surfaces results in a complex, entangled balance between interfacial forces and non linear viscous dissipation, which has been scarcely inspected. In particular, a detailed understanding of the…
Active particles in anisotropic, viscoelastic fluids experience competing stresses which guide their trajectories. An aligned suspension of particles can trigger a hydrodynamic bend instability, but the elasticity of the fluid can drive…
We develop a formal analogy between configurational stresses in two distinct physical systems, and study the flows that they induce when the configurations of interest include topological de- fects. The two systems in question are…
Interior stagnation point flows of viscoelastic liquids arise in a wide variety of applications including extensional viscometry, polymer processing and microfluidics. Experimentally, these flows have long been known to exhibit…
The linear stability of a shear-thinning, viscoelastic fluid undergoing any of the canonical rectilinear shear flows, viz., plane Couette flow and pressure-driven flow through a channel or a tube is analyzed in the creeping-flow limit using…
It is known that a finite-size homogeneous granular fluid develops an hydrodynamic-like instability when dissipation crosses a threshold value. This instability is analyzed in terms of modified hydrodynamic equations: first, a source term…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked elastomer networks with liquid crystal mesogens incorporated into the main or side chain. Polydomain liquid crystalline (nematic) elastomers exhibit unusual mechanical properties like soft…
We use the entropy method to analyze the nonlinear dynamics and stability of a continuum kinetic model of an active nematic suspension. From the time evolution of the relative entropy -- an energy-like quantity in the kinetic model -- we…
A linear stability analysis of the hydrodynamic equations with respect to the homogeneous cooling state is performed to study the conditions for stability of a suspension of solid particles immersed in a viscous gas. The dissipation in such…
This article models experimentally observed three dimensional particle-like waves that develop in nematic liquid crystals, with negative dielectric and conductive anisotropy, when subject to an applied alternating electric field. The liquid…