Related papers: Wicking through a confined micropillar array
A thin, elastic sheet floating on the surface of a liquid bath wrinkles when poked at its centre. We study the onset of wrinkling as well as the evolution of the pattern as indentation progresses far beyond the wrinkling threshold. We use…
We use multi-speckle diffusive wave spectroscopy (MSDWS) to probe the micron-scale dynamics of a granular pile submitted to discrete gentle taps. The typical time-scale between plastic events is found to increase dramatically with the…
We investigate the wicking in granular media by considering layers of grains at the surface of a liquid, and discuss the critical contact angle below which spontaneous impregnation takes place. This angle is found to be on the order of…
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…
The analytical expressions of liquid-vapor macroscopic contact angles are analyzed for various simple geometries and arrangements of the substrate, in particular when the latter exhibits two or more scales. It concerns the Wenzel state of…
Patterning solid surfaces with varying wettability is important to manage droplets in microfluidics, heat transfer and printing. Solid surface roughness poses fundamental limitations including contact-line pinning and solid friction. Here,…
We investigate the wrinkling dynamics of a thin elastic sheet that is indented or compressed while floating on a viscous liquid. We show that the deformation speed controls the dynamics, leading to a wrinkle wavelength significantly smaller…
Engineering technologies frequently draw inspiration from nature, as exemplified in bio-inspired adhesive surfaces. These surfaces present textures adorned by pillars, mimicking the topography found on the pads of certain animals renowned…
Preventing fluid penetration poses a challenging reliability concern in the context of power electronics, which is usually caused by unforeseen microfractures along the sealing joints. A better and more reliable product design heavily…
In this article, we describe the instability of a contact line under nonequilibrium conditions mainly based on the results of our recent studies. Two experimental examples are presented: the self-propelled motion of a liquid droplet and…
The main causes of energy dissipation in micro- and nano-scale wetting are viscosity and liquid-solid friction localized in the three-phase contact line region. Theoretical models predict the contactline friction coefficient to correlate…
The motion of a contact line is examined, and comparisons drawn, for a variety of models proposed in the literature. Pressure and stress behaviours at the contact line are examined in the prototype system of quasistatic spreading of a thin…
We present a combined theoretical and experimental study of the buckling of a thin film wrapped around a sphere under the action of capillary forces. A rigid sphere is coated with a wetting liquid, and then wrapped by a thin film into an…
Local contact line pinning prevents droplets from rearranging to minimal global energy, and models for droplets without pinning cannot predict their shape. We show that experiments are much better described by a theory, developed herein,…
Gaining access to the cell interior is fundamental for many applications, such as electrical recording, drug and biomolecular delivery. A very promising technique consists of culturing cells on nano/micro pillars. The tight adhesion and…
We demonstrate spontaneous wrinkling as a transient dynamical pattern in thin freely floating smectic liquid-crystalline films. The peculiarity of such films is that, while flowing liquid-like in the film plane, they cannot quickly expand…
In recent years, there has been a considerable interest in the mechanics of soft objects meeting fluid interfaces (elasto-capillary interactions). In this work we experimentally examine the case of a fluid resting on a thin film of rigid…
Understanding interactions between membranes requires measurements on well-controlled systems close to natural conditions, in which fluctuations play an important role. We have determined, by grazing incidence X-ray scattering, the…
Cells and other soft particles are often forced to flow in confined geometries in both laboratory and natural environments, where the elastic deformation induces an additional drag and pressure drop across the particle. In contrast with…
The motion of a long gas bubble in a confined capillary tube is ubiquitous in a wide range of engineering and biological applications. While the understanding of the deposited thin viscous film near the tube wall in Newtonian fluids is well…