Related papers: Active extensile stress promotes 3D director orien…
A surface in contact with the isotropic phase of a passive liquid crystal can induce nematic order over distances that range from microscopic to macroscopic when the nematic-isotropic interface undergoes an orientational-wetting transition.…
The role of active stress on the conformational dynamics of a polymer has drawn significant interest due to its potential applications in understanding the energy landscape of protein structures, buckling of biopolymers, genomic spatial…
Kinetic simulations have demonstrated that three-dimensional reconnection in collisionless regimes proceeds through the formation and interaction of magnetic flux ropes, which are generated due to the growth of tearing instabilities at…
The translation and shape deformations of a passive viscous Newtonian droplet immersed in an active nematic liquid crystal under circular confinement are analyzed using a linear stability analysis. We focus on the case of a sharply aligned…
Actin flow in the cortical cytoskeleton underneath the cell membrane generates mechanical stresses that shape the cell surface. We study this mechanism using a hydrodynamic model of a compressible active gel polymerizing at the membrane and…
Polymers and rod-like colloids (PaRC) adopt a favorable orientation under sufficiently strong flows. However, how the flow kinematics affect the alignment of such nanostructures according to their extensibility remains unclear. By analysing…
In active materials, uncoordinated internal stresses lead to emergent long-range flows. An understanding of how the behavior of active materials depends on mesoscopic (hydrodynamic) parameters is developing, but there remains a gap in…
In two-dimensional tissues, such as developing germ layers, pair-wise forces (or active stresses) arise from the contractile activity of the cytoskeleton, with dissipation provided by the three-dimensional surroundings. We show analytically…
We present the results of a combined experimental and theoretical investigation of the surface-tension-driven coalescence of flexible structures. Specifically, we consider the dynamics of the rise of a wetting liquid between flexible sheets…
We study spreading dynamics of nematic liquid crystal droplets within the framework of the long-wave approximation. A fourth order nonlinear parabolic partial differential equation governing the free surface evolution is derived. The…
In densely-packed two-dimensional systems of growing cells, such as rod-shaped bacteria, a number of experimental and numerical studies report distinct patterns of nematic orientational order in the presence of confinement. So far, these…
To develop a minimal model for a cell moving in a crowded environment such as in tissue, we investigate the response of a liquid drop of active matter moving on a flat rigid substrate to forces applied at its boundaries. We consider two…
Obstructions influence the growth and expansion of bodies in a wide range of settings -- but isolating and understanding their impact can be difficult in complex environments. Here, we study obstructed growth/expansion in a model system…
The form of the stress tensor is investigated in smooth, dense granular flows which are generated in split-bottom shear geometries. We find that, within a fluctuation fluidized spatial region, the form of the stress tensor is directly…
Hypothesis: Surrounding fluids affect critically drop wetting dynamics in many applications involving viscous environments. Although macroscopic effects of outer fluid viscosity on contact line motion have been documented, the extent to…
Monolayers of growing non-motile rod-shaped bacteria act as active nematic materials composed of hard particles rather than the flexible components of other commonly studied active nematics. The organization of these granular monolayers has…
The topological properties of many materials are central to their behavior, with the dynamics of topological defects being particularly important to intrinsically out-of-equilibrium, active materials. In this paper, local manipulation of…
Colloidal gels consist of percolating networks of interconnected arms. Their mechanical properties depend on the individual arms, and on their collective behaviour. We use numerical simulations to pull on a single arm, built from a model…
Recent experiments by Kantsler et. al. (2007) have shown that the relaxational dynamics of a vesicle in external elongation flow is accompanied by the formation of wrinkles on a membrane. Motivated by these experiments we present a theory…
Materials with extreme mechanical anisotropy are designed to work near a material instability threshold where they display stress channelling and strain localization, effects that can be exploited in several technologies. Extreme couple…