Related papers: Continuum mechanics at nanoscale. A tool to study …
The water ascent in tall trees is subject to controversy: the vegetal biologists debate on the validity of the cohesion-tension theory which considers strong negative pressures in microtubes of xylem carrying the crude sap. This article…
We can propound a thermo-mechanical understanding of the ascent of sap to the top of tall trees thanks to a comparison between experiments associated with the cohesion-tension theory and the disjoining pressure concept for liquid…
We present an investigation of transpiration of water in a 100 m tall tree using continuum simulations. Disjoining pressure is found to induce absolute negative pressures as high as -23.5 atm at the liquid-vapor meniscus during evaporation,…
The ability of trees to suck water from roots to leaves, sometimes to heights of over a hundred meters, is remarkable given the absence of any mechanical pump. This study deals with a number of issues, of both an historical and conceptual…
In Amazing numbers in biology, Flindt reports a giant, 128 meter-tall eucalyptus, and a 135 meter-tall sequoia. However, the explanation of the maximum altitude of the crude sap ascent and consequently the main reason of the maximum size…
We consider a thermodynamic state of a solvent and solution separated with an elastic semipermeable membrane in a box with a constant volume and the relevance of this simple model for the water uptake in tall trees. Under moderate…
Liquids in contact with solids are submitted to intermolecular forces inferring density gradients at the walls. The van der Waals forces make liquid heterogeneous, the stress tensor is not any more spherical as in homogeneous bulks and it…
The origin of land plants was one of the most important events in evolutionary history of earth in terms of its broad impact on metazoan life and the biotic environment. Because vascular tissues enabled land plants to meet the challenges of…
Liquids in contact with solids are submitted to intermolecular forces making liquids heterogeneous and, in a mechanical model, the stress tensor is not any more spherical as in homogeneous bulks. The aim of this article is to show that a…
Sap transport in trees has long fascinated scientists, and a vast literature exists on experimental and modelling studies of trees during the growing season when large negative stem pressures are generated by transpiration from leaves. Much…
It is well known that a solid (e.g. wood or rubber) can be put under tensile stress by pulling on it. Once a critical stress is overcome, the solid breaks, leaving an empty space. Similarly, due to internal cohesion, a liquid can withstand…
The nucleation and/or spreading of bubbles in water under tension (due to water evaporation) can be problematic for most plants along the ascending sap network from root to leaves, named xylem. Due to global warming, trees facing drought…
We study transport in synthetic, bi-disperse porous structures, with arrays of microchannels interconnected by a nanoporous layer. These structures are inspired by the xylem tissue in vascular plants, in which sap water travels from the…
Sap exudation is the process whereby trees such as sugar (Acer saccharum) and red maple (Acer rubrum) generate unusually high positive stem pressure in response to repeated cycles of freeze and thaw. This elevated xylem pressure permits the…
An expression of disjoining pressure in a water film, as a function of distance from the surface, is developed from prior experimental findings. The expression is implemented in commercial computational fluid dynamics solver and disjoining…
We review recent experiments on dewetting thin films of evaporating colloidal nanoparticle suspensions (nanofluids) and discuss several theoretical approaches to describe the ongoing processes including coupled transport and phase changes.…
We experimentally investigate the dynamics of capillary-driven flows at the nanoscale, using an original platform that combines nanoscale pores and microfluidic features. Our results show a coherent picture across multiple experiments…
In the field of nanoconfined fluids, there are striking examples of deformation/transport coupling in which mechanical solicitation of the confining host and dynamics of the confined fluid impact each other. While this intriguing behavior…
Experiments of water wicking in 1D silicon-dioxide nanochannels of heights 59 nm, 87 nm, 124 nm and 1015 nm are used to estimate the disjoining pressure of water which was found to be as high as ~1.5 MPa while exponentially decreasing with…
A geometrically nonlinear continuum mechanical theory is formulated for deformation and failure behaviors of amorphous polymers. The model seeks to capture material response over a range of loading rates, temperatures, and stress states…