Related papers: Modeling liquid migration in active swollen gel sp…
We investigate the swelling dynamics driven by solvent absorption in a hydrogel sphere immersed in a solvent bath, through an accurate computational model and numerical study. We extensively describe the transient process from dry to wet…
Swelling is a volumetric-growth process in which a porous material expands by spontaneous imbibition of additional pore fluid. Swelling is distinct from other growth processes in that it is inherently poromechanical: Local expansion of the…
Collective cell migration is a key driver of embryonic development, wound healing, and some types of cancer invasion. Here we provide a physical perspective of the mechanisms underlying collective cell migration. We begin with a catalogue…
From hydrogels and plastics to liquid crystals, soft solids cover a wide array of synthetic and biological materials that play key enabling roles in advanced technologies such as 3D printing, soft robotics, wearable electronics,…
We present an experimental study of the motion of a solid sphere falling through a wormlike micellar fluid. While smaller or lighter spheres quickly reach a terminal velocity, larger or heavier spheres are found to oscillate in the…
Motivated by the motion of nematode sperm cells, we present a model for the motion of an adhesive gel on a solid substrate. The gel polymerizes at the leading edge and depolymerizes at the rear. The motion results from a competition between…
Self-similar solutions of the equation that describes spreading of a liquid layer due to intermolecular forces are found. It is supposed that, when the thickness of the layer reaches some magnitude of the order of the molecular size, it…
Substrate-based cell motility is essential for fundamental biological processes, such as tissue growth, wound healing and immune response. Even if a comprehensive understanding of this motility mode remains elusive, progress has been…
We demonstrate spontaneous bidirectional motion of droplets on liquid infused surfaces in the presence of a topographical gradient, in which the droplets can move either toward the denser or the sparser solid fraction area. Our analytical…
The interaction of flexible polymers with fluid flows leads to a number of intriguing phenomena observed in laboratory experiments, namely drag reduction, elastic turbulence and heat transport modification in natural convection, and is one…
We present the results of an experimental investigation into buoyant rigid spheres rising through highly concentrated collections of hydrated hydrogel particles. The volume fraction of particles is such that the mechanical properties of the…
We show how liquid migrates in sheared unsaturated granular media using a grain scale model for capillary bridges. Liquid is redistributed to neighboring contacts after rupture of individual capillary bridges leading to redistribution of…
We analyze the displacements of the particles of a glass-forming molecular liquid perpendicular to a confining solid surface, using extensive molecular dynamics simulations with atomistic models. In the vicinity of an attractive surface,…
We investigate how a symmetric penetrable object immersed in an active fluid becomes motile due to a negative drag acting in the direction of its velocity. While similar phenomena have been reported only for active fluids that posses polar…
Active-elastic instabilities are common phenomena in the natural world which have the aspect of sudden mechanical morphings. Frequently, the driving force of the instability mechanisms has a chemo-mechanical nature which makes these kind of…
In the last years self-motile droplets attracted the attention of scientists from different fields ranging from applied biology to theoretical physics, because of their promising technological applications and important biological…
Active gels play an important role in biology and in inspiring biomimetic active materials, due to their ability to change shape, size and create their own morphology; the relevant mechanics behind these changes is driven by…
We study the interaction-induced migration of bubbles in shear flow and observe that bubbles suspended in elastoviscoplastic emulsions organise into chains aligned in the flow direction, similarly to particles in viscoelastic fluids. To…
The locomotion of flexible membrane-like organisms on top of curved surfaces appears in different contexts and scales. Still, such dynamics have not yet been quantitatively modeled and no realization of such motion in manmade systems has…
The slip of a fluid layer in contact with a solid confining surface is investigated for different temperatures and densities using molecular dynamic simulations. We show that for an anomalous water-like fluid the slip goes as follows: for…