Related papers: Dynamics and Control of Bubble-Propelled Microrobo…
Bubbles under vibration can behave in unusual ways, e.g., moving downward against the force of buoyancy. While the bubble downward motion due to the Bjerknes force is well known at acoustic frequencies close to the bubble resonant…
Much of the Earth and many surfaces of extraterrestrial bodies are composed of in-cohesive particle matter. Locomoting on granular terrain is challenging for common robotic devices, either wheeled or legged. In this work, we discover a…
Drag reduction in stationary turbulent flows by bubbles is sensitive to the dynamics of bubble oscillations. Without this dynamical effect the bubbles only renormalize the fluid density and viscosity, an effect that by itself can only lead…
Key features of the mechanical response of amorphous particulate materials, such as foams, emulsions, and granular media, to applied stress are determined by the frequency and size of particle rearrangements that occur as the system…
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…
We have designed and constructed an experimental system to study gas bubble growth in slightly supersatu- rated liquids. This is achieved by working with carbon dioxide dissolved in water, pressurized at a maximum of 1 MPa and applying a…
Aerial robots the size of a honeybee (~100 mg) have advantages over larger robots because of their small size, low mass and low materials cost. Previous iterations have demonstrated controlled flight but were difficult to fabricate because…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are no good dynamic simulation tools to predict the motion or performance of a microrobot as it moves against a substrate. At…
Microscopic robots could perform tasks with high spatial precision, such as acting on precisely-targeted cells in biological tissues. Some tasks may benefit from robots that change shape, such as elongating to improve chemical gradient…
We analyze the properties of naturally formed nano-bubbles in Lennard-Jones molecular dynamics simulations of liquid-to-vapor nucleation in the boiling and the cavitation regimes. The large computational volumes provide a realistic…
Microscopic robots could perform tasks with high spatial precision, such as acting in biological tissues on the scale of individual cells, provided they can reach precise locations. This paper evaluates the feasibility of in vivo locomotion…
Molecular dynamics studies of nono-sized rigid grains, droplets and bubbles in nano-sized pores indicate that the drag force may have a hydrodynamic form if the moving object is dense and small compared to the pore diameter. Otherwise, the…
The backswimmer fly is an aquatic insect, capable of regulating its buoyancy underwater. Its abdomen is covered with hemoglobin cells, used to bind and release oxygen, reversibly. Upon entering water, the fly entraps an air bubble in a…
Motivated by the dynamics of microbubbles near catalytic surfaces in bubble-powered microrockets, we consider theoretically the growth of a free spherical bubble near a flat no-slip surface in a Stokes flow. The flow at the bubble surface…
Powered by acoustics, existing therapeutic and diagnostic procedures will become less invasive and new methods will become available that have never been available before. Acoustically driven microrobot navigation based on microbubbles is a…
Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…
Liquid jet formations on water surfaces serve as a cornerstone in diverse scientific disciplines, underpinning processes in climatology, environmental science, and human health issues. Traditional models predominantly focus on pristine…
In this study, we use numerical simulations to investigate the flow field induced by a single magnetic microrobot rotating with a constant angular speed about an axis perpendicular to an underlying surface. A parallel solver for steady…
Bubbles and droplets are ubiquitous in many areas of engineering, including microfluidics where they can serve as microreactors for screening of chemical reactions. They are often formed out of a constriction (a microfluidic channel or a…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations to understand the translational and rotational diffusion of Janus nanoparticles at the interface between two immiscible fluids. Considering spherical particles with different affinity to fluid…