Related papers: Rigid spheres moving through soft solids

We experimentally study a scallop-like swimmer with reciprocally flapping wings in a nearly frictionless, cohesive granular medium consisting of hydrogel spheres. Significant locomotion is found when the swimmer's flapping frequency matches…

Tangential interactions between particles play a central role in suspension rheology. We show theoretically that these interactions, often attributed to contact friction, are a direct consequence of fluid flows between rough particles in…

Contacts between particles in dense, sheared suspensions are believed to underpin much of their rheology. Roughness and adhesion are known to constrain the relative motion of particles, and thus globally affect the shear response, but an…

When a rigid body collides with a liquid surface with sufficient velocity, it creates a splash curtain above the surface and entrains air behind the sphere, creating a cavity below the surface. While cavity dynamics have been studied for…

We present experimental results for spherical particles rising and settling in a still fluid. Imposing a well-controlled center of mass offset enables us to vary the rotational dynamics selectively by introducing an intrinsic rotational…

We investigate dynamical heterogeneities in the collective relaxation of a concentrated microgel system, for which the packing fraction can be conveniently varied by changing the temperature. The packing fraction dependent mechanical…

We experimentally study the behavior of a particle slightly denser than the surrounding liquid in solid body rotating flow. Earlier work revealed that a heavy particle has an unstable equilibrium point in unbounded rotation flows. In the…

Buckling induced by viscous flow changes the shape of sheet-like nanomaterial particles suspended in liquids. This instability at the particle scale affects collective behavior of suspension flows and has many technological and biological…

The formation of periodic wrinkles in soft layered materials due to mechanical instabilities is prevalent in nature and has been proposed for use in multiple applications. However, such phenomena have been explored predominantly in…

Relative motion between soft wet solids arises in a number of applications in natural and artificial settings, and invariably couples elastic deformation and fluid flow. We explore this in a minimal setting by considering a fluid-immersed…

We explore the influence of particle softness and internal structure on both the bulk and interfacial rheological properties of colloidal suspensions. We probe bulk stresses by conventional rheology, by measuring the flow curves, shear…

This paper is concerned with the diffusion of a fluid through a viscoelastic solid undergoing large deformations. Using ideas from the classical theory of mixtures and a thermodynamic framework based on the notion of maximization of the…

Large deformations of soft elastic beads spinning at high angular velocity in a denser background fluid are investigated theoretically, numerically, and experimentally using millimeter-size polyacrylamide hydrogel particles introduced in a…

Softer means stickier for solid adhesives, because material compliance facilitates close contact between non-conformal surfaces. Recent discoveries have revealed that soft materials can exhibit a rich array of new physics arising from…

Swimming microorganisms often self propel in fluids with complex rheology. While past theoretical work indicates that fluid viscoelasticity should hinder their locomotion, recent experiments on waving swimmers suggest a possible…

We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…

The behavior of suspensions of rigid particles in a non-Newtonian fluid is studied in the framework of a nonlinear homogenization method. Estimates for the overall properties of the composite material are obtained. In the case of a…

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…

A variety of complex fluids consist in soft, round objects (foams, emulsions, assemblies of copolymer micelles or of multilamellar vesicles -- also known as onions). Their dense packing induces a slight deviation from their prefered…

The simplicity of hard spheres as a model system is deceptive. Although the particles interact solely through volume exclusion, that nevertheless suffices for a wealth of static and dynamical phenomena to emerge, making the model an…