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We use a combination of original light scattering techniques and particles with unique optical properties to investigate the behavior of suspensions of attractive colloids under gravitational stress, following over time the concentration…
Turbulent flows have been used for millennia to mix solutes; a familiar example is stirring cream into coffee. However, many energy, environmental, and industrial processes rely on the mixing of solutes in porous media where confinement…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the occurrence of inhomogeneous shear flows in soft jammed materials. We use rough walls to impose a simple shear flow and study the athermal motion of jammed assemblies of soft…
The addition of enough non-adsorbing polymer to an otherwise stable colloidal suspension gives rise to a variety of phase behavior and kinetic arrest due to the depletion attraction induced between the colloids by the polymers. We report a…
Dense suspensions of model hard-sphere-like colloids, with different particle sizes, are examined experimentally in the glass state, under shear and extensional rheology. Under steady shear flow we detect Discontinuous Shear Thickening…
Channels are fundamental building blocks from biophysics to soft robotics, often used to transport or separate solutes. As solute particles inevitably transverse between streamlines along the channel by molecular diffusion, the effective…
We study the rheological behaviour of a dense bidispersed suspension varying the relative size of the two dispersed phases. The main outcome of our analysis is that an enhanced flowability (reduced relative viscosity) of the suspension can…
When sheared, most elastic solids such as metals, rubbers and polymer hydrogels dilate in the direction perpendicular to the shear plane. This well-known behaviour known as the Poynting effect is characterized by a positive normal stress.…
Behavior of a dilute polymer solution in a random three-dimensional flow with an average shear is studied experimentally. Polymer contribution to the shear stress is found to be more than two orders of magnitude higher than in a laminar…
We numerically examine ballistic active disks driven through a random obstacle array. Formation of a pinned or clogged state occurs at much lower obstacle densities for the active disks than for passive disks. As a function of obstacle…
Mechanical properties of disordered materials are governed by their underlying free energy landscape. In contrast to external fields, embedding a small fraction of active particles within a disordered material generates non-equilibrium…
Various disordered dense systems such as foams, gels, emulsions and colloidal suspensions, exhibit a jamming transition from a liquid state (they flow) to a solid state below a yield stress. Their structure, thoroughly studied with powerful…
Attractive colloids diffuse and aggregate to form gels, solid-like particle networks suspended in a fluid. Gravity is known to strongly impact the stability of gels once they are formed. However, its effect on the process of gel formation…
Curable hydrogels have tunable properties that make them well-suited for applications in drug delivery, cell therapies, and 3D bioprinting. Advances in microfluidic droplet generation enable rapid fabrication of polymer-filled droplets.…
The effects of surfactant coating on a deformable viscous drop under the combined action of a shear flow and a uniform electric field, are investigated by solving the coupled equations of electrostatics, fluid flow and surfactant transport.…
The dispersion of solute in porous media shows a non-linear increase in the transition from diffusion to advection dominated dispersion as the flow velocity is raised. In the past, the behavior in this intermediate regime has been explained…
Strong particulate gels are widely believed to behave poroelastically in compression, e.g. in sedimentation, even though they consolidate irreversibly because of the stickiness of the particles. Particulate gels are usually adhesive as well…
Colloidal gels, like many other soft and disordered solids derive their mechanical properties not only from the strength of interparticle attraction, but also from the symmetry of the forces that constrain particle motion. While non-central…
We propose and analyze a mathematical model of the mechanics of gels, consisting of the laws of balance of mass and linear momentum. We consider a gel to be an immiscible and incompressible mixture of a nonlinearly elastic polymer and a…
Fluidisation is the process by which the weight of a bed of particles is supported by a gas flow passing through it from below. When fluidised materials flow down an incline, the dynamics of the motion differ from their non-fluidised…