Related papers: Hydrogel menisci: Shape, interaction, and instabil…
When captured by a flat nematic-isotropic interface, colloidal particles can be dragged by it. As a result spatially periodic structures may appear, with the period depending on a particle mass, size, and interface…
Control of frictional interactions among liquid-suspended particles has led to tunable, strikingly non-Newtonian rheology via the formation of strong flow constraints as particles come into close proximity under shear. Typically, these…
We simulate dense assemblies of frictional spherical grains in steady shear flow under controlled normal stress $P$ in the presence of a small amount of an interstitial liquid, which gives rise to capillary menisci, assumed isolated…
We consider a dilute system of small hard beads or hard fibers immersed in a very soft gel able to withstand large elastic deformations. Because of its low to very low shear modulus, this system is very sensitive to small forces. We…
Hydrogel consists of a crosslinked polymer matrix imbibed with a solvent such as water at volume fractions that can exceed 90\%. They are important in many scientific and engineering applications due to their tunable physiochemical…
From microactuators to biological tissues, non-porous materials with the ability to strongly expand when in contact with a solvent are ubiquitous. Consequently, the swelling of polymer systems such as hydrogel has received recently much…
We consider the shape of crystals which are soft in the sense that their elastic modulus $\mu$ is small compared to their surface tension $\gamma$, more precisely $ \mu a < \gamma$ where $a$ is the lattice spacing. We show that their…
Spherical particles confined to a sphere surface cannot pack densely into a hexagonal lattice without defects. In this study, we use hard particle Monte Carlo simulations to determine the effects of continuously deformable shape anisotropy…
This work provides an exact mathematical characterization of the meniscus formed by a liquid of density $\rho$ (model for tumor tissue) when probed with a cantilever device, operating by gravity (acceleration $g$) and with surface tension…
Amorphous media at finite temperatures, be them liquids, colloids or glasses, are made of interacting particles that move chaotically due to thermal energy, colliding and scattering continuously off each other. When the average…
Lubricated contacts in soft materials are important in various engineering systems and natural settings. Three major lubrication regimes are boundary (BL), mixed (ML), and elasto-hydrodynamic (EHL) lubrication, where the contact region is…
In this work, we develop a novel model describing the equilibrium shape of sessile droplets on a wetted horizontal surface in a gravitational field. The model takes into account the intermolecular Lenard-Jones forces between solid and the…
True contact between randomly rough solids consists of myriad individual micro-junctions. While their total area controls the adhesive friction force of the interface, other macroscopic features, including viscoelastic friction, wear,…
The elastic properties of granular hydrogels are commonly characterised under wet conditions, yet the influence of capillary interactions remains unclear. In practical applications, hydrogels operate in aqueous environments containing…
Cellular membranes exhibit a large variety of shapes, strongly coupled to their function. Many biological processes involve dynamic reshaping of membranes, usually mediated by proteins. This interaction works both ways: while proteins…
Macroscopic elastic core-shell systems can be generated as toy models to be deformed and haptically studied by hand. On the mesoscale, colloidal core-shell particles and microgels are fabricated and investigated by different types of…
The wetting of solid surfaces can be manoeuvred by altering the energy balance at the interfacial region. While electric field acts favourably to spread a droplet on a rigid surface, this tendency may be significantly suppressed over soft…
Morphological instability of the solid-liquid interface occuring in a crystal growing from an undercooled thin liquid being bounded on one side by a free surface and flowing down inclined plane is investigated by a linear stability analysis…
Dense suspensions of hard particles in a liquid can exhibit strikingly counter-intuitive behavior, such as discontinuous shear thickening (DST) [1-8] and reversible shear jamming (SJ) into a state with finite yield stress [9-13]. Recent…
Millimeter-sized particles trapped at the surface of a liquid bath attract each other through the deformation of the liquid-air interface, a phenomenon known as "the Cheerios effect". We consider here a situation similar at first sight: the…