Related papers: Tunable corrugated patterns in an active gel sheet

In active nematic liquid crystals activity is able to drive chaotic spatiotemporal flows referred to as active turbulence. Active turbulence has been characterized through theoretical and experimental work as a low Reynolds number…

The production of mechanical stresses in living organisms largely relies on localized, force-generating active units embedded in filamentous matrices. Numerical simulations of discrete fiber networks with fixed boundaries have shown that…

Can active forces be exploited to drive the consistent collapse of an active polymer into a folded structure? In this paper we introduce and perform numerical simulations of a simple model of active colloidal folders, and show that a…

Using novel micro-printing techniques, we develop a versatile experimental setup that allows us to study how lateral confinement tames the active flows and defect properties of the microtubule/kinesin active nematic system. We demonstrate…

We use linear stability analysis and hybrid lattice Boltzmann simulations to study the dynamical behaviour of an active nematic confined in a channel made of viscoelastic material. We find that the quiescent, ordered active nematic is…

Active materials are capable of converting free energy into mechanical work to produce autonomous motion, and exhibit striking collective dynamics that biology relies on for essential functions. Controlling those dynamics and transport in…

Active nematics contain topological defects which under sufficient activity move, create and annihilate in a chaotic quasi-steady state, called active turbulence. However, understanding active defects under confinement is an open challenge,…

While studies of active nematics in two dimensions have shed light on various aspects of the flow regimes and topology of active matter, three-dimensional properties of topological defects and chaotic flows remain unexplored. By confining a…

We present a study on swelling-induced circumferential buckling of tubular shaped gels. Inhomogeneous stress develops as gel swells under mechanical constraints, which gives rise to spontaneous buckling instability without external force.…

We employ a novel hydrodynamic framework for active matter coupled to an environment to study the local temperature of an active nematic, assuming proximity to thermal equilibrium. We show that, due to the mechanosensitivity of fuel…

Active nematic fluids confined in narrow channels generate spontaneous flows when the activity is sufficiently intense. Recently, it was shown that if the molecular anchoring at the channel walls is conflicting flows are initiated even in…

We report, for the first time, some experimental observations regarding a new type of long range interaction between rigid particles that prevails when they are suspended in an soft elastic gel. A denser particle submerges itself to a…

Complex interactions between cellular systems and their surrounding extracellular matrices are emerging as important mechanical regulators of cell functions such as proliferation, motility, and cell death, and such cellular systems are…

A nematic liquid-crystal gel is a macroscopically homogeneous elastic medium with the rotational symmetry of a nematic liquid crystal. In this paper, we develop a general approach to the study of these gels that incorporates all underlying…

Foam is a canonical example of disordered soft matter where local force balance leads to the competition of many metastable configurations. Here we present an experimental and theoretical framework for "active foam" where an individual…

A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…

Pattern-forming metamaterials feature microstructures specifically designed to change the material's macroscopic properties due to internal instabilities. These can be triggered either by mechanical deformation or, in the case of active…

With quenched disorder, we introduce two-dimensional active nematics suspended in an incompressible fluid. We write the coarse-grained hydrodynamic equations of motion for slow variables, viz. density, orientation and flow fields. The…

The contact of a hydrogel during the rotational shearing on glass surface in concentrated polymer solution was observed in situ. Dynamic contact patterns that rotate in-phase with the rotational shearing of the gel were observed for the…

We present a continuum level analytical model of a droplet of active contractile fluid consisting of filaments and motors. We calculate the steady state flows that result from a splayed polarisation of the filaments. We account for the…