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Surfaces of planetary bodies can have strong electric fields, subjecting conductive grains to repulsive electrostatic forces. This has been proposed as mechanism to eject grains from the ground. To quantify this process, we study mm-sized…
Many objects in nature and industry are wrapped in a thin sheet to enhance their chemical, mechanical, or optical properties. There are similarly a variety of methods for wrapping, from pressing a film onto a hard substrate, to using…
We have developed a theory of air leakage at interfaces between two elastic solids with application to suction cups in contact with randomly rough surfaces. We present an equation for the airflow in narrow constrictions which interpolate…
Granular materials segregate spontaneously due to differences in particle size, shape, density and flow behaviour. In this paper we experimentally investigate density-difference-driven segregation for a range of density ratios and a range…
Surface bubbles are present in many industrial processes and in nature, as well as in CO$_2$ beverage. They have motivated many theoretical, numerical and experimental works. This paper presents the current knowledge on the physics of…
The primary attribute of interest of surface nanobubbles is their unusual stability and a number of theories trying to explain this have been put forward. Interestingly, the dissolution of nanobubbles is a topic that did not receive a lot…
Nanopores are both a tool to study single-molecule biophysics and nanoscale ion transport, but also a promising material for desalination or osmotic power generation. Understanding the physics underlying ion transport through nano-sized…
In many biological and small scale technological applications particles may transiently bind to a cylindrical surface. In between two binding events the particles diffuse in the bulk, thus producing an effective translation on the cylinder…
Transparent biological tissues can be precisely dissected with ultrafast lasers using optical breakdown in the tight focal zone. Typically, tissues are cut by sequential application of pulses, each of which produces a single cavitation…
Industrial activities carried out in confined spaces are characterized by a very specific type of air pollution. The extended exposure to this kind of pollution is often highly harmful, resulting in dramatic effects both on health and…
The study investigates the effectiveness of using low-pressure oxygen plasma, generated by microwave discharge, to sterilize bacterial spores of Bacillus Stearothermophilus and Bacillus Subtilis. Plasma, a highly ionized state of matter…
We propose a model of antibiotic diffusion through a bacterial biofilm when diffusion and/or absorption barriers develop in the biofilm. The idea of this model is: We deduce details of the diffusion process in a medium in which direct…
Improving building energy performance requires the development of new highly insulative materials. An affordable retrofitting solution comprising a thin film could improve the resistance to heat flow in both residential and commercial…
From multicellular tissues to bacterial colonies, three dimensional cellular structures arise through the interaction of cellular activities and mechanical forces. Simple bacterial communities provide model systems for analyzing such…
The design of a biodegradable, environmentally friendly surfactant is carried out, taking the structure of a known surfactant that lacks these qualities as the starting point, using mesoscopic computer simulations. The newly designed…
Liquid simulations for computer animation often avoid simulating the air phase to reduce computational costs and ensure good conditioning of the linear systems required to enforce incompressibility. However, this free surface assumption…
Parallel assemblies of slender structures forming brushes are common in our daily life from sweepers to pastry brushes and paintbrushes. This type of porous objects can easily trap liquid in their interstices when removed from a liquid…
Passive filtering is a common strategy used to reduce airborne disease transmission and particulate contaminants in buildings and individual covers. The engineering of high-performance filters with relatively low flow resistance but high…
A pore-scale model is introduced for two-phase flow in dense packings of polydisperse spheres. The model is developed as a component of a more general hydromechanical coupling framework based on the discrete element method, which will be…
A new technique for the separation of macromolecules is proposed and investigated. A thin mesh with pores comparable to the radius of gyration of a free chain is used to filter chains according to their length. Without a field it has…