Related papers: Structural aging of a cohesive and amorphous granu…
We present a series of experiments investigating the flow regimes and repose angles of highly concave particle packings in a rotating drum. By varying grain geometry from spherical to highly non-convex shapes, adjusting frictional…
The processing of thin-structured materials in a fluidic environment, from nearly inextensible but flexible graphene sheets to highly extensible polymer films, arises in many applications. So far, little is known about the dynamics of such…
Confined two-dimensional assemblies of floating particles, known as granular rafts, are prone to develop a highly nonlinear response under compression. Here we investigate the transition to the friction-dominated jammed state and map the…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is ubiquitous in suspensions of nanoparticles, proteins and colloids. With a few notable exceptions, surface-tension-minimizing liquid droplets in bulk suspensions continuously coalesce, increasing in size…
We investigate the dissipative mechanisms exhibited by creased material sheets when subjected to mechanical loading, which comes in the form of plasticity and relaxation phenomena within the creases. After demonstrating that plasticity…
We report on experiments to measure the temporal and spatial evolution of packing arrangements of anisotropic, cylindrical granular material, using high-resolution capacitive monitoring. In these experiments, the particle configurations…
Silica nanoparticles trapped at air-water interface form a 2D solid state with amorphous order. We propose a theoretical model to describe how this solid-like state deforms under a shear strain ramp up to and beyond a yielding point which…
We experimentally investigate the statistical behaviour of a model two-dimensional granular system undergoing stationary sedimentation. Buoyant cylindrical particles are rotated in liquid-filled drum, thus confined in a harmonic centripetal…
Using X-ray tomography, we experimentally investigate the structural evolution of packings composed of 3D-printed hexapod particles, each formed by three mutually orthogonal spherocylinders, during tap-induced compaction. We identify two…
Numerous soft materials jam into an amorphous solid at high packing fraction. This non-equilibrium phase transition is best understood in the context of a model system in which particles repel elastically when they overlap. Recently,…
Patchy nanocubes are intriguing materials with simple shapes and space-filling and multidirectional bonding properties. Previous studies have revealed various mesoscopic structures such as colloidal crystals in the solid regime and rod-like…
The flow of a charged-stabilized suspension through a single constricted channel is studied experimentally by tracking the particles individually. Surprisingly, the behavior is found to be qualitatively similar to that of inertial dry…
Granular packings slowly driven towards their instability threshold are studied using a digital imaging technique as well as a nonlinear acoustic method. The former method allows us to study grain rearrangements on the surface during 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…
Patterns are quotidian in nature. Distinct multiscale patterns are generally a consequence of nonequilibrium dynamical processes associated with mechanical or hydrodynamic instabilities. In this thesis, I report experimental investigations…
Cohesive granular materials, like wet sand, retain their shape before yielding under stress. This solid-like behavior is associated with elasticity. As the loading increases, the material typically flows. However, cohesive materials can…
The dry frictional contact between two solid surfaces is well-known to obey Coulomb friction laws. In particular, the static friction force resisting the relative lateral (tangential) motion of solid surfaces, initially at rest, is known to…
Amorphous solids, or glasses, are distinguished from crystalline solids by their lack of long-range structural order. At the level of two-body structural correlations, glassformers show no qualitative change upon vitrifying from a…
Mixing and transport of passive particles are studied in a simple kinematic model of a meandering jet flow motivated by the problem of lateral mixing and transport in the Gulf Stream. We briefly discuss a model streamfunction, Hamiltonian…
Introducing a model to study deposition and erosion of single particles at microscopic scale, we investigate the clogging and erosive processes in a pore. The particle diameter, concentration, and adhesive forces rule the way particles are…