Related papers: Rifts in Rafts
When active matter particles such as swimming bacteria are placed in an asymmetric array of funnels, it has been shown that a ratchet effect can occur even in the absence of an external drive. Here we examine active ratchets for two…
We use numerical simulations and linear stability analysis to study the dynamics of an active liquid crystal film on a substrate in the regime where the passive system would be isotropic. Extensile activity builds up local orientational…
Fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) cohesively aggregate via the formation of voluntary ant-to-ant attachments when under confinement or exposed to water. Once formed, these aggregations act as viscoelastic solids due to dynamic bond exchange…
The breakup of a fluid jet into droplets has long fascinated natural scientists, with early research dating back to the 19th century. Infinitesimal perturbations to a jet grow because of surface tension, which eventually leads to breakup of…
Ensembles of particles rotating in a two-dimensional fluid can exhibit chaotic dynamics yet develop signatures of hidden order. Such "rotors" are found in the natural world spanning vastly disparate length scales - from the rotor proteins…
Failure of amorphous materials is characterized by the emergence of dissipation. The connection between particle dynamics, dissipation, and overall material rheology, however, has still not been elucidated. Here, we take a new approach…
We have devised an original laboratory experiment where we investigate the frictional behaviour of a single crystal salt slider over a large number of deformation cycles. Because of its physical properties, salt, a surrogate for natural…
Crack growth is the basic mechanism leading to the failure of brittle materials. Engineering addresses this problem within the framework of continuum mechanics, which links deterministically the crack motion to the applied loading. Such an…
We study the phenomena associated with the low-velocity impact of two solid discs of equal size using a cell model of brittle solids. The fragment ejection exhibits a jet-like structure the direction of which depends on the impact…
The motion of several plates in an inviscid and incompressible fluid is studied numerically using a vortex sheet model. Two to four plates are initially placed in-line, separated by a specified distance, and actuated in the vertical…
The connection between friction and jamming in granular media, molecular glasses, and complex fluids is explored. The paper first reviews the way friction is measured, the types of results that are observed, and what is known about the…
We experimentally investigate how a long granular pile confined in a narrow channel destabilizes when it is inclined above the angle of repose. A uniform flow then develops, which is localized at the free surface. It first accelerates…
A system of three point vortices in an unbounded plane has a special family of self-similarly contracting or expanding solutions: during the motion, vortex triangle remains similar to the original one, while its area decreases (grows) at a…
When a liquid drop strikes a deep pool of a second liquid, an impact crater opens while the liquid of the drop decelerates and spreads on the surface of the crater. If the density of the drop is larger than the surrounding, the interface…
When pulling a probe particle in a many-particle system with fixed velocity, the probe's effective friction, defined as average pulling force over its velocity, $\gamma_{eff}:=\langle F_{ex}\rangle/u$, first keeps constant (linear…
Growing planets interact with their surrounding protoplanetary disk, generating feedback effects that may promote or suppress nearby planet formation. We study how spiral waves launched by planets affect the motion and collisional evolution…
We study the effect of single biased tracer particle in a bath of other particles performing the random average process (RAP) on an infinite line. We focus on the large time behavior of the mean and the fluctuations of the positions of the…
We numerically investigate the flow structure of periodic steady water waves of fixed relative mass flux propagating on rotational flows with piece-wise constant vorticity. We show that for wave solutions along the global bifurcation…
We study the two-dimensional flow of foams around a circular obstacle within a long channel. In experiments, we confine the foam between liquid and glass surfaces. In simulations, we use a deterministic software, the Surface Evolver, for…
We study a system of hard-core particles sliding downwards on a fluctuating one-dimensional surface which is characterized by a dynamical exponent $z$. In numerical simulations, an initially random particle density is found to coarsen and…