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Numerous soft materials jam into an amorphous solid at high packing fraction. This non-equilibrium phase transition is best understood in the context of a model system in which particles repel elastically when they overlap. Recently,…
The process of polymer condensation, i.e. the formation of bonds between reactive end-groups, is ubiquitous in both industry and biology. Here we study generic systems undergoing polymer condensation in competition with cyclisation. Using a…
We study the rheology of monodisperse and bidisperse emulsions with various droplet sizes (1 $\mu$m -- 2 $\mu$m diameter). Above a critical volume fraction $\phi_c$, these systems exhibit solid-like behavior and a yield stress can be…
A polycrystalline solid is modelled as an ensemble of random irregular polyhedra filling the entire space occupied by the solid body, leaving no voids or flaws between them. Adjacent grains can slide with a relative velocity proportional to…
We propose an improved effective-medium theory to obtain the concentration dependence of the viscosity of particle suspensions at arbitrary volume fractions. Our methodology can be applied, in principle, to any particle shape as long as the…
Jamming is a fundamental transition that governs the mechanical behavior of particulate media, including sand, foam and dense suspensions but also biological tissues: Upon compression, particulate media can change from freely flowing to a…
The rheological properties of suspensions containing high solid fractions are investigated. Attention is focused on viscosity of silicate and magmatic melt systems. A general empirical equation which describes the relative viscosity of…
We consider percolation and jamming transitions for particulate systems exposed to compression. For the systems built of particles interacting by purely repulsive forces in addition to friction and viscous damping, it is found that these…
The rheology of cohesive granular materials, under a constant pressure condition, is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. Depending on the shear rate, pressure, and interparticle cohesiveness, the system exhibits four distinctive…
Granulation is a process whereby a dense colloidal suspension is converted into pasty granules (surrounded by air) by application of shear. Central to the stability of the granules is the capillary force arising from the interfacial tension…
We present experimental observations of the onset of flow (liquefaction) for horizontally vibrated granular materials. As the acceleration increases above certain value, the top layer of granular material liquefies, while the remainder of…
We use computer simulations to study the microscopic dynamics of an athermal assembly of soft particles near the fluid-to-solid, jamming transition. Borrowing tools developed to study dynamic heterogeneity near glass transitions, we…
We study model protein solutions and colloidal suspensions in the temperature range whereupon the nature of the system changes from a homogeneous fluid to a "cluster fluid". It is commonly assumed - as deduced by the behavior of the…
Colloidal gels are widely applied in industry due to their rheological character -- no flow takes place below the yield stress. Such property enables gels to maintain uniform distribution in practical formulations; otherwise, solid…
We study the sedimentation of finite-size inertial particles in a Rayleigh-Taylor-like setup using state-of-the-art direct numerical simulations. The falling particles are observed to produce two distinct regions: a leading mixing layer…
Efficient mixing of colloids, particles or molecules is a central issue in many processes. It results from the complex interplay between flow deformations and molecular diffusion, which is generally assumed to control the homogenization…
Cohesive powders tend to form porous aggregates which can be compacted by applying an external pressure. This process is modelled using the Contact Dynamics method supplemented with a cohesion law and rolling friction. Starting with…
We report experiments investigating jamming fronts in a floating layer of cornstarch suspension. The suspension has a packing fraction close to jamming, which dynamically turns into a solid when impacted at a high speed. We show that the…
Soft, amorphous solids such as tissues, foams, and emulsions are composed of deformable particles. However, the effect of single-particle deformability on the collective behavior of soft solids is still poorly understood. We perform…
We perform the analog to the "water bell" experiment using non-cohesive granular material. When a jet of granular material, many particles wide, rebounds from a fixed cylindrical target, it deforms into a sharply-defined sheet or cone with…