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We report a novel technique to passively create strong secondary flows at moderate to high flow rates in microchannels, accurately control them and finally, due to their deterministic nature, program them into microfluidic platforms. Based…

Data obtained from Flow Cytometry present pronounced variability due to biological and technical reasons. Biological variability is a well-known phenomenon produced by measurements on different individuals, with different characteristics…

The mechanical performance of plant fibres is linked to the presence of crystalline elements dispersed within an amorphous cohesive matrix. The more the crystalline reinforcement is aligned with the fibre axis, the better the mechanical…

Topological defects play a central role in the physics of many materials, including magnets, superconductors and liquid crystals. In active fluids, defects become autonomous particles that spontaneously propel from internal active stresses…

Mechanical forces such as fluid shear have been shown to enhance cell growth and differentiation, but knowledge of their mechanistic effect on cells is limited because the local flow patterns and associated metrics are not precisely known.…

Soft-walled microchannels arise in many applications, ranging from organ-on-a-chip platforms to soft-robotic actuators. However, despite extensive research on their static and dynamic response, the potential failure of these devices has not…

Confinement can significantly alter fluid properties, offering potential for specific technological applications. However, achieving precise control over the structural complexity of confined fluids and soft matter remains challenging, as…

Unlike human intestines, which are long, hollow tubes, the intestines of sharks and rays contain interior helical structures surrounding a cylindrical hole. One function of these structures may be to create asymmetric flow, favoring passage…

We study the bendocapillary instability of a liquid droplet that part fills a flexible walled channel. Inspired by experiments in which a `weaving' pattern emerges as droplets of liquid are condensed slowly into deformable microchannels, we…

We simulate quasistatic flows of an ideal two-dimensional monodisperse foam around different obstacles, both symmetric and asymmetric, in a channel. We record both pressure and network contributions to the drag and lift forces, and study…

Quasi-periodic structures of quasicrystals yield novel effects in diverse systems. However, there is little investigation on employing quasi-periodic structures in the morphology control. Here, we show the use of quasi-periodic surface…

Biological microswimmers often encounter deformable boundaries in physiological conditions; for instance, the viscoelastic walls of reproductive tract during migration of spermatozoa, or host tissue during early bacterial biofilm formation.…

Designing materials or structures that can achieve asymmetric shape-shifting in response to symmetrically switching stimuli is a promising approach to enhance the locomotion performance of soft actuators/robots. Inspired by the geometry of…

Past work has shown that ions can pass through a membrane more readily in one direction than the other. We demonstrate here in a model and an experiment that for a mixture of small and large particles such asymmetric diffusion can arise…

Boundary conditions dictate how fluids, including liquid crystals, flow when pumped through a channel. Can boundary conditions also be used to control internally driven active fluids that generate flows spontaneously? By using numerical…

We use computer simulations to study the morphology and rheological properties of a bidimensional emulsion resulting from a mixture of a passive isotropic fluid and an active contractile polar gel, in the presence of a surfactant that…

We perform molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the occurrence of inhomogeneous shear flows in soft jammed materials. We use rough walls to impose a simple shear flow and study the athermal motion of jammed assemblies of soft…

We introduce an innovative lumped-parameter model of the aortic valve, designed to efficiently simulate the impact of valve dynamics on blood flow. Our reduced model includes the elastic effects associated with the leaflets' curvature and…

We study a mesoscopic model for the flow of amorphous solids. The model is based on the key features identified at the microscopic level, namely peri- ods of elastic deformation interspersed with localised rearrangements of parti- cles that…

Surface effects become important in microfluidic setups because the surface to volume ratio becomes large. In such setups the surface roughness is not any longer small compared to the length scale of the system and the wetting properties of…