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Related papers: Dancing disclinations in confined active nematics

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This work examines self-mixing in active nematics, a class of fluids in which mobile topological defects drive chaotic flows in a system comprised of biological filaments and molecular motors. We present experiments that demonstrate how…

We present a hydrodynamic model for a thin spherical shell of active nematic liquid crystal with an arbitrary configuration of defects. The active flows generated by defects in the director lead to the formation of stable vortices,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2017-11-13 Diana Khoromskaia , Gareth P. Alexander

Microfluidics involves the manipulation of flows at the microscale, typically requiring external power sources to generate pressure gradients. Alternatively, harnessing flows from active fluids, which are usually chaotic, has been proposed…

We use active nematohydrodynamics to study the flow of an active fluid in a 3D microchannel, finding a transition between active turbulence and regimes where there is a net flow along the channel. We show that the net flow is only possible…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-10-07 Santhan Chandragiri , Amin Doostmohammadi , Julia M. Yeomans , Sumesh P. Thampi

Living materials at different length scales manifest active nematic features such as orientational order, nematic topological defects, and active nematic turbulence. Using numerical simulations we investigate the impact of fluid inertia on…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-08-10 Roozbeh Saghatchi , Mehmet Yildiz , Amin Doostmohammadi

We report a numerical study addressing the dynamics of compound vesicles confined in a channel under shear flow. The system comprises a smaller vesicle embedded within a larger one and can be used to mimic, for example, leukocytes or…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-12-11 A. Lamura

We use continuum simulations to study the impact of anisotropic hydrodynamic friction on the emergent flows of active nematics. We show that, depending on whether the active particles align with or tumble in their collectively self-induced…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-03-16 Kristian Thijssen , Luuk Metselaar , Julia M. Yeomans , Amin Doostmohammadi

Coupling between flow and orientation is a central issue in understanding the collective dynamics of active biofilaments and cells. Active stresses generated by motor activity destroy (quasi-)long-range orientational order and induce…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-06-04 Yutaka Kinoshita , Nariya Uchida

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…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2023-08-10 A. Tiribocchi , M. Durve , M. Lauricella , A. Montessori , S. Succi

Non-equilibrium dynamics of topological defects can be used as a fundamental propulsion mechanism in microscopic active matter. Here, we demonstrate swimming of topological defect-propelled colloidal particles in (passive) nematic fluids…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-09-30 Tianyi Yao , Žiga Kos , Yimin Luo , Edward B. Steager , Miha Ravnik , Kathleen J. Stebe

We numerically study two-dimensional active nematics with periodic activity patterning. For stripes of activity, we observe a transition from two-dimensional to one-dimensional active turbulence as the maximum active force and distance…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-03-11 Cody D. Schimming , C. J. O. Reichhardt , C. Reichhardt

The persistent dynamics in systems out of equilibrium, particularly those characterized by annihilation and creation of topological defects, is known to involve complicated spatiotemporal processes and is deemed difficult to control. Here…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-11-22 Zhi-Feng Huang , Hartmut Löwen , Axel Voigt

Active fluids exhibit chaotic flows at low Reynolds number known as active turbulence. Whereas the statistical properties of the chaotic flows are increasingly well understood, the nature of the transition from laminar to turbulent flows as…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-01-08 Malcolm Hillebrand , Ricard Alert

We review the dynamical behavior of giant fluid vesicles in various types of external hydrodynamic flow. The interplay between stresses arising from membrane elasticity, hydrodynamic flows, and the ever present thermal fluctuations leads to…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2014-05-12 David Abreu , Michael Levant , Victor Steinberg , Udo Seifert

Recent experiments and numerical studies have drawn attention to the dynamics of active nematics. Two-dimensional active nematics flow spontaneously and exhibit spatiotemporal chaotic flows with proliferation of topological defects in the…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-07-08 Farzan Vafa , Mark J. Bowick , M. Cristina Marchetti , Boris I. Shraiman

Point-like motile topological defects control the universal dynamics of diverse two-dimensional active nematics ranging from shaken granular rods to cellular monolayers. A comparable understanding in higher dimensions has yet to emerge. We…

Confinement can be used to systematically tame turbulent dynamics occurring in active fluids. Although periodic channels are the simplest geometries to study confinement numerically, the corresponding experimental realizations require…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2023-04-12 Chaitanya Joshi , Zahra Zarei , Michael M. Norton , Seth Fraden , Aparna Baskaran , Michael F. Hagan

We present a model for the dynamics of fluid vesicles in linear flow which consistently includes thermal fluctuations and nonlinear coupling between different modes. At the transition between tank-treading and tumbling, we predict a…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2013-06-10 David Abreu , Udo Seifert

The effects of an electric field on the flow patterns and defect dynamics of two-dimensional active nematics are numerically investigated. We found that field-induced director reorientation causes anisotropic active turbulence characterized…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2023-07-20 Yutaka Kinoshita , Nariya Uchida

Topological defects are at the root of the large-scale organization of liquid crystals. In two-dimensional active nematics, two classes of topological defects of charges $\pm 1/2$ are known to play a major role due to active stresses.…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-04-08 Louis Brézin , Thomas Risler , Jean-François Joanny