Related papers: Durotaxis in viscoelastic fluids
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…
In solids and organic materials, environment-induced dephasing of particles and long-lived excitations leads to the crossover in their transport properties between quantum wave-like propagation and classical diffusive motion. In this work,…
Microorganisms often encounter strong confinement and complex hydrodynamic flows while navigating their habitats. Combining finite-element methods and stochastic simulations, we study the interplay of active transport and heterogeneous…
Turbulent fluid flows exhibit a complex small-scale structure with frequently occurring extreme velocity gradients. Particles probing such swirling and straining regions respond with an intricate shape-dependent orientational dynamics,…
The dynamics of a tracer particle in a glassy matrix of obstacles displays slow complex transport as the free volume approaches a critical value and the void space falls apart. We investigate the emerging subdiffusive motion of the test…
Confined granular fluids, placed in a shallow box that is vibrated vertically, can achieve homogeneous stationary states thanks to energy injection mechanisms that take place throughout the system. These states can be stable even at high…
We review recent work on active colloids or swimmers, such as self-propelled microorganisms, phoretic colloidal particles, and artificial micro-robotic systems, moving in fluid-like environments. These environments can be water-like and…
The locomotion of flexible membrane-like organisms on top of curved surfaces appears in different contexts and scales. Still, such dynamics have not yet been quantitatively modeled and no realization of such motion in manmade systems has…
Active matter systems such as eukaryotic cells and bacteria continuously transform chemical energy to motion. Hence living systems exert active stresses on the complex environments in which they reside. One recurring aspect of this…
We study non-equilibrium velocity fluctuations in a model for the sedimentation of non-Brownian particles experiencing long-range hydrodynamic interactions. The complex behavior of these fluctuations, the outcome of the collective dynamics…
We introduce a class of continuum mechanical models aimed at describing the behaviour of viscoelastic fluids by incorporating concepts originated in the theory of solid plasticity. Within this class, even a simple model with constant…
We study theoretically the viscoelastic properties of sheared binary fluids that have strong dynamical asymmetry between the two components. The dynamical asymmetry arises due to asymmetry between the viscoelastic stresses, particularly the…
While the dynamics of polymer chains in equilibrium media is well understood by now, the polymer dynamics in active non-equilibrium environments can be very different. Here we study the dynamics of polymers in a viscous medium containing…
Behavior of the mixture of particles and dimers moving with different jump rates at reconstructed surfaces is described. Collective diffusion coefficient is calculated by the variational approach. Anisotropy of the collective particle…
We consider a suspension of active rigid particles (swimmers) in a steady Stokes flow, where particles are distributed according to a stationary ergodic random process, and we study its homogenization in the macroscopic limit. A key point…
Heterogeneous media constitute random disordered environments where transport is drastically hindered. Employing extensive molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the spatio-temporal dynamics of tracer particles in the Lorentz model…
The cytoplasm and biomembranes in biological cells contain large numbers of proteins that cyclically change their shapes. They are molecular machines that can function as molecular motors or carry out many other tasks in the cell. We…
Applications such as digital microfluidics and bio-diagnostics rely on droplet locomotion. A prominent example of such motion is durotaxis, a phenomenon that requires a stiffness gradient along a surface for the transport of liquids, cells,…
We present a hydrodynamic model of spreading epithelial monolayers as polar viscous fluids, with active contractility and traction on the substrate. The combination of both active forces generate an instability that leads to nonlinear…
Both natural and artificial small-scale swimmers may often self-propel in environments subject to complex geometrical constraints. While most past theoretical work on low-Reynolds number locomotion addressed idealised geometrical…