Related papers: Deformation of hydrogel during freezing
A spherical droplet is given an initial rotation in the streamwise direction and is impulsively accelerated by a uniform free stream. Numerical results for the deformation and dynamics of the droplet are obtained by utilising a finite…
Thermo-responsive hydrogels are a promising material for creating controllable actuators for use in micro-scale devices, since they expand and contract significantly (absorbing or expelling fluid) in response to relatively small temperature…
It is widely known that freezing breaks soft, wet materials. However, the mechanism underlying this damage is still not clear. To understand this process, we freeze model, brittle hydrogel samples, while observing the growth of ice-filled…
Theoretical calculations, computer simulations and experiments indicate the possible existence of a ferromagnetic liquid state. Should such a state exist, demagnetization effects would force a nontrivial magnetization texture governed by…
The proneness of water to crystallize is a major obstacle to understanding its putative exotic behavior in the supercooled state. It also represents a strong practical limitation to cryopreservation of biological systems. Adding some…
The breakup of water droplets when exposed to high-speed gas flows is investigated using both high-magnification shadowgraphy experiments as well as fully three-dimensional numerical simulations, which account for viscous as well as…
We have investigated the effects of either distorting hydrogen bonds or removing proton degeneracy on the thermodynamic properties of a minimal model for associating liquids. The presence of two liquid phases and a density anomaly is…
Ice-templating, also referred to as freeze-casting, is a process exploiting unidirectional crystallization of ice to structure macroporous materials from colloidal solutions. Commonly applied to inorganic and polymeric materials, we employ…
We explore the influence of particle shape on the behavior of evaporating drops. A first set of experiments discovered that particle shape modifies particle deposition after drying. For sessile drops, spheres are deposited in a ring-like…
Cells and other soft particles are often forced to flow in confined geometries in both laboratory and natural environments, where the elastic deformation induces an additional drag and pressure drop across the particle. In contrast with…
Deposition of water on aerosol particles contributes to ice cloud formation in the atmosphere with implications for the water cycle and climate on Earth. The heterogeneous ice nucleation process is influenced by physico-chemical properties…
Droplets deform soft substrates near their contact lines. Using confocal microscopy, we measure the deformation of silicone gel substrates due to glycerol and fluorinated-oil droplets for a range of droplet radii and substrate thicknesses.…
We study the dynamics of an active gel droplet with imposed orientational anchoring (normal or planar) at its surface. We find that if the activity is large enough droplets subject to strong anchoring spontaneously start to rotate, with the…
Nematic elastomers and glasses deform spontaneously when subjected to temperature changes. This property can be exploited in the design of heterogeneously patterned thin sheets that deform into a non-trivial shape when heated or cooled. In…
Liquid foams have been observed to behave like immersed granular materials in at least one respect: deformation tends to raise their liquid contents, a phenomenon called dilatancy. We present a geometrical interpretation thereof in foams…
Nafion is a perfluorosulfonated polymer, widely used in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells. This polymer adopts a complex structural organisation resulting from the microsegregation between hydrophobic backbones and hydrophilic sulfonic…
Helium nanodroplets doped with polar molecules are studied by electrostatic deflection. This broadly applicable method allows even polyatomic molecules to attain sub-Kelvin temperatures and nearly full orientation in the field. The…
We show that energy dissipation partition between a liquid and a solid controls the shape and stability of droplets sliding on viscoelastic gels. When both phases dissipate energy equally, droplet dynamics is similar to that on rigid…
Water-repellent properties of superhydrophobic surfaces make them promising for anti-icing and deicing applications. Through experimental visualization of frozen sessile droplets undergoing melting on superhydrophobic surfaces, we identify…
In recent decades novel solid substrates have been designed which change their wettability in response to light or an electrostatic field. Here, we investigate a droplet on substrates with oscillating uniform wettability by varying minimium…