Related papers: Multi-scale control of active emulsion dynamics
Phase separation is the thermodynamic process that explains how droplets form in multicomponent fluids. These droplets can provide controlled compartments to localize chemical reactions, and reactions can also affect the droplets' dynamics.…
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…
We investigated the actuation performances of anisotropic gels driven by mechanical and chemical stimuli, in terms of both deformation processes and stroke--curves, and distinguished between the fast response of gels before diffusion starts…
The interplay between kinetic and macroscopic scales during magnetic reconnection is investigated using particle-in-cell simulations of magnetic island coalescence in the strongly-magnetized, relativistic pair plasma regime. For large…
When an amorphous material is strained beyond the point of yielding it enters a state of continual reconfiguration via dissipative, avalanche-like slip events that relieve built-up local stress. However, how the statistics of such events…
Microswimmers and active colloids often move in confined systems, including those involving interfaces. Such interfaces, especially at the microscale, may deform in response to the stresses of the flow created by the active particle. We…
The phenomenon of drag reduction by polymer additives had been studied in simulations on the basis of non-Newtonian fluid mechanical models that take into account the field of polymer extension (conformation tensor) and its interaction with…
The rates of activated processes, such as escape from a metastable state and nucleation, are exponentially sensitive to an externally applied field. We describe how this applies to modulation by high-frequency fields and illustrate it with…
Controlling interfaces of phase separating fluid mixtures is key to creating diverse functional soft materials. Traditionally, this is accomplished with surface-modifying chemical agents. Using experiment and theory, we study how mechanical…
A new computational framework for the simulation of turbulent flow through complex objects and along irregular boundaries is presented. This is motivated by the application of metal foams in compact heat-transfer devices, or as catalyst…
Over the last decade, an increasing body of evidence has emerged, supporting the existence of a metastable liquid-liquid critical point in supercooled water, whereby two distinct liquid phases of different densities coexist. Analysing long…
Active matter with local polar or nematic order is subject to the well-known Simha-Ramaswamy instability. It is so far unclear how, despite this instability, biological tissues can undergo robust active anisotropic deformation during animal…
A mesoscopic model for shear plasticity of amorphous materials in two dimensions is introduced, and studied through numerical simulations in order to elucidate the macroscopic (large scale) mechanical behavior. Plastic deformation is…
Interactions among biologically active agents is facilitated by their self-generated chemical and hydrodynamic fields. In order to elucidate the pair-wise interactions between such micro-organisms, we employ active droplets as a model…
We study the over-damped dynamics of individual one-dimensional elastic filaments subjected to a chiral active force which propels each point of the filament at a fixed angle relative to the tangent vector of the filament at that point.…
We show that energy dissipation partition between a liquid and a solid controls the shape and stability of droplets sliding on viscoelastic gels. When both phases dissipate energy equally, droplet dynamics is similar to that on rigid…
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…
We examine the structural relaxation of glassy materials at finite temperatures, considering the effect of activated rearrangements and long-range elastic interactions. Our three-dimensional mesoscopic relaxation model shows how the…
The high-energy tail of the distribution of solute-solvent interaction energies is poorly characterized for condensed systems, but this tail region is of principal interest in determining the excess free energy of the solute. We introduce…
When a gel absorbs solvent from surrounding, stress field is created in the gel, and this causes complex dynamics of the swelling behavior. Here we study this effect for disk-shaped gel by rigorously solving the diffusio-mechanical coupling…