Related papers: Elastowetting of Soft Hydrogel Spheres
We characterize the mechanical recovery of compliant silicone gels following adhesive contact failure. We establish broad, stable adhesive contacts between rigid microspheres and soft gels, then stretch the gels to large deformations by…
When a rigid object approaches a soft material in a viscous fluid, hydrodynamic stresses arise in the lubricated contact region and deform the soft material. The elastic deformation modifies in turn the flow, hence generating a…
Integrated photoelasticity is investigated for a soft material subjected to a three-dimensional stress state. In the experiment, a solid sphere is pressed against a gelatin gel (Young's modulus is about 4.2 kPa) that deforms up to 4.5 mm…
The dynamics of thin volatile droplets comprising of binary mixtures deposited on a heated substrate are investigated. Using lubrication theory, we develop a novel one-sided model to predict the spreading and retraction of an evaporating…
The capillary forces exerted by liquid drops and bubbles on a soft solid are directly measured using molecular dynamics simulations. The force on the solid by the liquid near the contact line is not oriented along the liquid vapor interface…
The results of a numerical investigation of fluidized beds of spherical particles in a narrow vertical cylindrical pipe, with particular attention to the spontaneous settling along the wall, are reported. Starting from a steady fluidized…
We study experimentally the motion of non-deformable microbeads in a linear shear flow close to a wall bearing a thin and soft polymer layer. Combining microfluidics and 3D optical tracking, we demonstrate that the steady-state bead/surface…
The spreading of liquid drops on surfaces corrugated with micron-scale parallel grooves is studied both experimentally and numerically. Because of the surface patterning, the typical final drop shape is no longer spherical. The elongation…
Solid interfaces have intrinsic elasticity. However, in most experiments, this is obscured by bulk stresses. Through microscopic observations of the contact-line geometry of a partially wetting droplet on an anisotropically stretched…
We report an experimental investigation of the spontaneous motion of liquid droplets on soft gels with a crosslinking gradient. By systematically adjusting the spatial difference in crosslinking density, we observed that millimeter-sized…
Droplets deform soft substrates near their contact lines. Using confocal microscopy, we measure the deformation of silicone gel substrates due to glycerol and fluorinated-oil droplets for a range of droplet radii and substrate thicknesses.…
The spreading of a cap-shaped spherical droplet on a completely wettable spherical substrate is studied. The non-equilibrium thermodynamic formulation is used to derive the thermodynamic driving force of spreading including the line-tension…
The size-dependent contact angle and the drying and wetting morphological transition are studied with respect to the volume change for a spherical cap-shaped droplet placed on a spherical substrate. The line-tension effect is included using…
We study water between parallel metal walls under applied electric field accounting for the image effect at $T=298$ K. The electric field due to the surface charges serves to attract and orient nearby water molecules, while it tends to a…
A liquid drop impacting a non-wetting rigid substrate laterally spreads, then retracts, and finally jumps off again. An elastic solid, by contrast, undergoes a slight deformation, contacts briefly, and bounces. The impact force on the…
We study the interaction of small hydrophobic particles on the surface of an ultra-soft elastic gel, in which a small amount of elasticity of the medium balances the weights of the particles. The excess energy of the surface of the deformed…
We present fully analytical solutions for the deformation of a stretched soft substrate due to the static wetting of a large liquid droplet, and compare our solutions to recently published experiments (Xu et al, Soft Matter 2018). Following…
When a hydrophilic solute in water is suddenly turned into a hydrophobic species, for instance, by photoionization, a layer of hydrated water molecules forms around the solute on a time scale of a few picoseconds. We study the dynamic…
Slow dynamics in a fluid are studied in one of the most basic systems possible: polydisperse hard spheres. Monodisperse hard spheres cannot be studied as the slow down in dynamics as the density is increased is preempted by crystallisation.…
We present a numerical study of a thin elastic sheet with small extensibility freely sedimenting in a viscous fluid. Two scenarios are investigated: sedimentation in free space and near an infinite wall, where the wall may be vertical or…