Related papers: Preferential Root Tropism Induced by Structural In…

Roots provide basic functions to plants such as water/nutrient uptake and anchoring in soil. The growth and development of root systems contribute to colonizing the surrounding soil and optimizing the access to resources. It is usually…

Root systems can influence the dynamics of evapotranspiration of water out of a porous medium. The coupling of evapotranspiration remains a key aspect affecting overall root behavior. Predicting the evapotranspiration curve in the presence…

Lotus leaves floating on water usually experience short-wavelength edge wrinkling that decays toward the center, while the leaves growing above water normally morph into a global bending cone shape with long rippled waves near the edge.…

The water uptake by roots of plants is examined for an ideal situation, with an approximation that resembles plants growing in pots, meaning that the total soil volume is fixed. We propose a coupled water uptake-root growth model. A…

In this paper we consider the multiscale modelling of water transport in vegetated soil. In the microscopic model we distinguish between subdomains of soil and plant tissue, and use the Richards equation to model the water transport through…

Immiscible fluid displacement in porous media is fundamental for many environmental processes, including infiltration of water in soils, groundwater remediation, enhanced recovery of hydrocarbons and carbon geosequestration. Microstructural…

Imbibition plays a central role in diverse energy, environmental, and industrial processes. In many cases, the medium has multiple parallel strata of different permeabilities; however, how this stratification impacts imbibition is poorly…

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…

We investigate the effect of interstitial liquid on the physical properties of granular media by measuring the angle of repose as a function of the liquid content. The resultant adhesive forces lead to three distinct regimes in the observed…

Water molecules play an important role in providing unique environments for biological reactions on cell membranes. It is widely believed that water molecules form bridges that connect lipid molecules and stabilize cell membranes. Using…

How do the topology and geometry of a tubular network affect the spread of particles within fluid flows? We investigate patterns of effective dispersion in the hierarchical, biological transport network formed by Physarum polycephalum. We…

We propose a theory for erosional channelization induced by fluid flow in a saturated granular porous medium. When the local fluid flow-induced stress is larger than a critical threshold, grains are dislodged and carried away so that the…

The initial emergence of the primary root from a germinating seed is a pivotal phase that influences a plant's survival. Abiotic factors such as pH, nutrient availability, and soil composition significantly affect root morphology and…

Initial residual stress is omnipresent in biological tissues and soft matter, and can affect growth-induced pattern selection significantly. Here we demonstrate this effect experimentally by letting soft tubes grow in the presence or…

The roots of some coastal and wetland trees grow peculiar vertical protrusions, the function of which remains unclear. Here, using computational simulations based on first-principles fluid and sedimentation dynamics, we argue that the…

Complex systems have motivated continuing interest from the scientific community, leading to new concepts and methods. Growing systems represent a case of particular interest, as their topological, geometrical, and also dynamical properties…

Mechanical interactions among cells in a growing microbial colony can significantly influence the colony's spatial genetic structure and, thus, evolutionary outcomes such as the fates of rare mutations. Here, we computationally investigate…

The mechanical properties of a thin, planar material, perfused by an embedded flow network, can be changed locally and globally by the fluid transport and storage, resulting in small or large-scale deformation, such as out-of-plane…

This study presents physical observations and insights into particle migration characteristics throughout the suffusion process. Using a purpose-built coaxial permeameter cell, suffusion experiments were conducted on idealised internally…

The paper studies a class of variational problems, modeling optimal shapes for tree roots. Given a measure $\mu$ describing the distribution of root hair cells, we seek to maximize a harvest functional $\mathcal{H}$, computing the total…