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Small flexible fibers in a turbulent flow are found to be most of the time as straight as stiff rods. This is due to the cooperative action of flexural rigidity and fluid stretching. However, fibers might bend and buckle when they tumble…
The climate system is a forced, dissipative, nonlinear, complex and heterogeneous system that is out of thermodynamic equilibrium. The system exhibits natural variability on many scales of motion, in time as well as space, and it is subject…
Computer simulation of the hopping charge transport in disordered organic materials has been carried out explicitly taking into account charge-charge interactions. This approach provides a possibility to take into account dynamic…
In this study we investigate shallow turbidity density currents and underflows from mechanical point of view. We propose a simple hyperbolic model for such flows. On one hand, our model is based on very basic conservation principles. On the…
Coulomb drag is a transport phenomenon whereby long-range Coulomb interaction between charge carriers in two closely spaced but electrically isolated conductors induces a voltage (or, in a closed circuit, a current) in one of the conductors…
We study the statistics of the power flux into a collection of inelastic beads maintained in a fluidized steady-state by external mechanical driving. The power shows large fluctuations, including frequent large negative fluctuations, about…
What do the ocean surface and a swaying flag have in common? Both are deformable surfaces exhibiting chaotic motion when exposed to turbulent flows. Whether such motion is primarily driven by flow turbulence or by nonlinear dynamics…
This Ph.D. thesis is divided in two parts. The first one concerns the equilibrium properties of glassy systems. Some aspects of the phenomenology of glasses and of theories attempting to describe them are reviewed in chapter 1. A study of…
Localized rain events have been found to follow power-law distributions over several decades, suggesting parallels between precipitation and seismic activity [O. Peters et al., PRL 88, 018701 (2002)]. Similar power laws can be generated by…
Most studies on granular physics have focused on dry granular media, with no liquids between the grains. However, in geology and many real world applications (e.g., food processing, pharmaceuticals, ceramics, civil engineering,…
We explore the pressure of active particles on curved surfaces and its relation to other interfacial properties. We use both direct simulations of the active systems as well as simulations of an equilibrium system with effective (pair)…
Emergent phenomena share the fascinating property of not being obvious consequences of the design of the system in which they appear. This characteristic is no less relevant when attempting to simulate such phenomena, given that the outcome…
We study an optimization problem for a model of steady state water transport through plants that maximizes water flow subject to the constraints on hydraulic conductance due to vulnerability to embolism (air blockage of conduits). The model…
We perform computer simulations of mechanically linked (poly[2]catenanes, PC) and chemically bonded (bonded rings, BR) pairs of self-avoiding ring polymers in steady shear. We find that BR's develop a novel motif, termed gradient tumbling,…
Modeling the dynamics of colloidal rods remains a central challenge in soft-matter physics due to the anisotropic and long-ranged nature of their interactions. Hydrodynamic interactions in rods suspensions are often assumed to be screened…
Over the years, advances in experimental and computational methods have helped us to understand the role of thermodynamic, kinetic and active (chaperone-aided) effects in coordinating the folding steps required to achieving a knotted native…
Riparian vegetation along riverbanks and seagrass along coastlines interact with water currents, significantly altering their flow. To characterise the turbulent fluid motion along the streamwise--edge of a region covered by submerged…
In this thesis I study the dynamics of some nonequilibrium systems, using both computer simulations and theoretical tools. In particular, the following topics are studied: (i) metastability in a nonequilibrium ferromagnetic system, (ii) the…
Inertial particles advected in chaotic flows often accumulate in strange attractors. While moving in these fractal sets they usually approach each other and collide. Here we consider inertial particles aggregating upon collision. The new…
We report an experimental and numerical study of turbulent fluid motion in a free surface. The flow is realized experimentally on the surface of a tank filled with water stirred by a vertically oscillating grid positioned well below the…