Related papers: Confinement controls the creep rate in soft granul…

Despite their importance in many biological, ecological and physical processes, microorganismal fluid flows under tight confinement have not been investigated experimentally. Strong screening of Stokelets in this geometry suggests that the…

Discrete element method simulations of confined bidisperse granular shear flows elucidate the balance between diffusion and segregation that can lead to either mixed or segregated states, depending on confining pressure. Results indicate…

We investigate the wrinkling dynamics of an elastic filament immersed in a viscous fluid submitted to compression at a finite rate with experiments and by combining geometric nonlinearities, elasticity, and slender body theory. The drag…

We experimentally demonstrate that the flow rate of granular material through an aperture is controlled by the exit velocity imposed to the particles and not by the pressure at the base, contrary to what is often assumed in previous works.…

The velocity relaxation of an impulsively forced spherical particle in a fluid confined by two parallel plane walls is studied using a direct numerical simulation approach. During the relaxation process, the momentum of the particle is…

We numerically investigate the athermal creep deformation of amorphous materials having a wide range of stability. The imposed shear stress serves as the control parameter, allowing us to examine the time-dependent transient response…

Many active fluid systems encountered in biology are set in total geometric confinement. Cytoplasmic streaming in plant cells is a prominent and ubiquitous example, in which cargo-carrying molecular motors move along polymer filaments and…

With a novel 3D discrete-element method specially developed with adhesive contact mechanics, random loose packings of uniform spherical micron-sized particles are fully investigated. The results show that large velocity, large size or weak…

Yield stress materials form an interesting class of materials that behave like solids at small stresses, but start to flow once a critical stress is exceeded. It has already been reported both in experimental and simulation work that flow…

The mechanical response of elastic porous media confined within rigid geometries is central to a wide range of industrial, geological, and biomedical systems. However, current models for these problems typically overlook the role of wall…

We observe a new type of behavior in a shear thinning yield stress fluid: freestanding convection rolls driven by vertical oscillation. The convection occurs without the constraint of container boundaries yet the diameter of the rolls is…

Fluid convection during protein crystallization plays a significant role in determining crystal growth rate and crystal quality. Crystals grown in reduced flow strength gives better quality crystal. Hence, tuning the flow strength is very…

We investigated the effects of particle shape on shear thickening in densely packed suspensions. Rods of different aspect ratios and non-convex hooked rods were fabricated. Viscosity curves and normal stresses were measured using a…

Active fluids generate internal active stress and exhibit unique responses to external forces such as superfluidity and self-yielding transitions. However, how confinement geometry influences these responses remains poorly understood. Here,…

Direct numerical simulations are used to elucidate the interplay of wettability and fluid viscosities on immiscible fluid displacements in a heterogeneous porous medium.We classify the flow regimes based using qualitative and quantitative…

We report on the dynamics of a model frictional system submitted to minute external perturbations. The system consists of a chain of sliders connected through elastic springs that rest on an incline. By introducing cyclic expansions and…

We investigate the down-hill creep of a layer of granular material on a slope caused by an oscillatory variation of the size of the particles. The material is modeled as an athermal two dimensional polydisperse system of soft disks under…

We perform numerical simulations of a two-dimensional bidisperse granular packing subjected to both a static confining pressure and a sinusoidal dynamic forcing applied by a wall on one edge of the packing. We measure the response…

Confinement can have a dramatic effect on the behavior of all sorts of particulate systems and it therefore is an important phenomenon in many different areas of physics and technology. Here, we investigate the role played by the softness…

Equilibration of polymer melts containing highly entangled long polymer chains in confinement or with free surfaces is a challenge for computer simulations. We approach this problem by first studying polymer melts based on the soft-sphere…