Related papers: Optimizing fog harvesting by biomimicry
We introduce a novel technique for grabbing water with a flexible solid. This new passive pipetting mechanism was inspired by floating flowers and relies purely on the coupling of the elasticity of thin plates and the hydrodynamic forces at…
Glass formers exhibit, upon an oscillatory excitation, a response function whose imaginary and real parts are known as the loss and storage moduli respectively. The loss modulus typically peaks at a frequency known as the \alpha frequency…
In order for surface scattering models to be accurate they must necessarily satisfy energy conservation and reciprocity principles. Roughness scattering models based on Kirchoff's approximation or perturbation theory do not satisfy these…
We propose a numerical method for fluid deformable surfaces governed by surface Stokes flow and Helfrich bending energy under active growth, aiming to model shape evolution of the epithelium in developmental processes. To prevent…
In natural environments, solid surfaces present both opportunities and challenges for bacteria. On one hand, they serve as platforms for biofilm formation, crucial for bacterial colonization and resilience in harsh conditions. On the other…
The quality of a liquid-repellent surface is quantified by both the apparent contact angle $\theta_0$ that a sessile drop adopts on it, and the value of the liquid pressure threshold the surface can withstand without being impaled by the…
In this paper, we develop a general mathematical framework for the electro-osmosis problem to design simultaneous microscale electric and hydrodynamic cloaking in a Hele-Shaw configuration. A novel approach to achieving simultaneously…
We propose a topology-optimization framework for optimizing finite structures of arbitrary shape by combining density-based methods with level-set approaches. We first optimize regular polygonal structures to suppress the photonic density…
An efficient topology optimization method applicable to both continuum and rarefied gas flows is proposed in the framework of gas-kinetic theory. The areas of gas and solid are marked by the material density, based on which a fictitious…
In this paper, first we propose a novel hybrid renewable energy-based solution for frost prevention in horticulture applications involving active heaters. Then, we develop a multi-objective robust optimization-based formulation to optimize…
Hypothesis: Slippery Omniphobic Covalently Attached Liquids (SOCAL) have been proposed for making omnirepellent thin films of self-assembled dimethylsiloxane polymer brushes grafted from silica surfaces. Smooth and flat at very small scale,…
We present a metaheuristic conditional neural-network-based method aimed at identifying physically interesting metastable states in a potential energy surface of high rugosity. To demonstrate how this method works, we identify and analyze…
Optical tweezers enable non-contact trapping of micro-scale objects using light. Despite their widespread use, it is currently not known how tightly it is possible to three-dimensionally trap micro-particles with a given photon budget.…
Hypothesis: Bacterial contamination of surfaces poses a major threat to public health. Designing effective antibacterial or self-cleaning surfaces requires understanding how bacteria-laden droplets interact with solid substrates and how…
Although most prior research on the dew-harvesting technology has focused on nocturnal operations, achieving round-the-clock freshwater harvesting remains crucial. However, daytime dew-harvesting faces two key challenges as compared to its…
Organic photoswitchable molecules have struggled in solid state form to fulfill their remarkable potential, in terms of photoswitching performance and long-term stability when compared to their inorganic counterparts. We report the concept…
We demonstrate a bistable optical trap by tightly focusing a vortex laser beam. The optical potential has the form of a Mexican hat with an additional minimum at the center. The bistable trapping corresponds to a non-equilibrium steady…
The models introduced in this paper describe a uniform distribution of plant stems competing for sunlight. The shape of each stem, and the density of leaves, are designed in order to maximize the captured sunlight, subject to a cost for…
We optimize multilayered anti-reflective coatings for photovoltaic devices, using modern evolutionary algorithms. We apply a rigorous methodology to show that a given structure, which is particularly regular, emerge spontaneously in a very…
Superhydrophobic surfaces reduce drag by combining hydrophobicity and roughness to trap gas bubbles in a micro- and nanoscopic texture. Recent work has focused on specific cases, such as striped grooves or arrays of pillars, with limited…