Related papers: Rigid spheres moving through soft solids
In this study, we experimentally examine the behavior of a free-falling rigid sphere penetrating a quiescent liquid pool. Observations of the sphere trajectory in time are made using two orthogonally placed high-speed cameras, yielding the…
We have investigated the drag on a sphere falling through a clay suspension that has a yield stress and exhibits rheological aging. The drag force increases with both speed and the rest time between preparation of the system and the start…
We investigate the force of flowing granular material on an obstacle. A sphere suspended in a discharging silo experiences both the weight of the overlaying layers and drag of the surrounding moving grains. In experiments with frictional…
We report, for the first time, some experimental observations regarding a new type of long range interaction between rigid particles that prevails when they are suspended in an soft elastic gel. A denser particle submerges itself to a…
Soft, low-friction particles in silos show peculiar features during their discharge. The outflow velocity and the clogging probability both depend upon the momentary silo fill height, in sharp contrast to silos filled with hard particles.…
Outflow of granular materials from silos is a remarkably complex physical phenomenon that has been extensively studied with simple objects like monodisperse hard disks in two dimensions (2D) and hard spheres in 2D and 3D. For those…
Soft materials such as colloidal suspensions, polymer solutions and liquid crystals are constituted by mesoscopic entities held together by weak forces. Their mechanical moduli are several orders of magnitude lower than those of atomic…
The Leidenfrost effect occurs when an object near a hot surface vaporizes rapidly enough to lift itself up and hover. Although well-understood for liquids and stiff sublimable solids, nothing is known about the effect with materials whose…
We investigate through numerical simulations the hydrodynamic interactions between two rigid spherical particles suspended on the axis of a cylindrical tube filled with an elastoviscoplastic fluid subjected to pressure-driven flow. The…
Soft materials are ubiquitous in technological applications that require deformability, for instance, in flexible, water-repellent coatings. However, the wetting properties of pre-strained soft materials are only beginning to be explored.…
We report on the modification of drag by neutrally buoyant spherical particles in highly turbulent Taylor-Couette flow. These particles can be used to disentangle the effects of size, deformability, and volume fraction on the drag, when…
A huge number of technological and biological systems involves the lubricated contact between rough surfaces of soft solids in relative accelerated motion. Examples include dynamical rubber seals and the human joints. In this study we…
Motivated by the aim of understanding the effect of media heterogeneity on the swimming dynamics of flagellated bacteria, we study the rotation and swimming of rigid helices in dilute suspensions experimentally and theoretically. We first…
Dynamical heterogeneities in a colloidal fluid close to gelation are studied by means of computer simulations. A clear distinction between some fast particles and the rest, slow ones, is observed, yielding a picture of the gel composed by…
Liquid migration in active soft solids is a very common phenomenon in Nature at different scales: from cells to leaves. It can be caused by mechanical as well as chemical actions. The work focuses on the migration of liquid provoked by…
A pinned or free-floating rigid plate lying on the free surface of a thin film of viscous fluid, which itself lies on top of a horizontal substrate that is moving to the right at a constant speed is considered. The focus of the present work…
We examine swimmers comprising of two rigid spheres which oscillate periodically along their axis of symmetry, considering both when the oscillation is in phase and anti-phase, and study the effects of fluid viscoelasticity on their net…
A wide range of disordered materials, from biological to geological assemblies, feature discrete elements undergoing large shape changes. How significant geometrical variations at the microscopic scale affect the response of the assembly,…
When a soft hydrogel sphere is placed on a rigid hydrophilic substrate, it undergoes arrested spreading by forming an axisymmetric foot near the contact line, while conserving its global spherical shape. In contrast, liquid water (that…
We investigate the response of a system of hard spheres to two classes of perturbations over a range of densities spanning the fluid, crystalline, and glassy regimes within a molecular dynamics framework. Firstly, we consider the relaxation…