Related papers: Soft lubrication
Dynamics simulation with frictional contacts is important for a wide range of applications, from cloth simulation to object manipulation. Recent methods using smoothed lagged friction forces have enabled robust and differentiable simulation…
We consider the problem of a rigid surface moving over a flat plane. The surfaces are separated by a small gap filled by a lubricant fluid. The relative position of the surfaces is unknown except for the initial time $t=0$. The total load…
We propose a novel three-way coupling method to model the contact interaction between solid and fluid driven by strong surface tension. At the heart of our physical model is a thin liquid membrane that simultaneously couples to both the…
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…
Probing the fluid dynamics of thin films is an excellent tool to study the solid/liquid boundary condition. There is no need for external stimulation or pumping of the liquid due to the fact that the dewetting process, an internal…
Utilizing colloidal probe, lateral force microscopy and simultaneous confocal microscopy, combined with finite element analysis, we investigate the mechanism of static friction for a microparticle on a soft, adhesive surface. We find that…
Cells exert traction forces on compliant substrates and can induce surface instabilities that appear as characteristic wrinkling patterns. Here, we develop a mechanical description of cell-induced wrinkling on soft substrates using a thin…
We consider a cylinder immersed in viscous fluid moving near a flat substrate covered by an incompressible viscoelastic fluid layer, and study the effect of the fluid viscoelasticity on the lift force exerted on the cylinder. The lift force…
We present the results of an experimental investigation into buoyant rigid spheres rising through highly concentrated collections of hydrated hydrogel particles. The volume fraction of particles is such that the mechanical properties of the…
We study the sliding friction for viscoelastic solids, e.g., rubber, on hard flat substrate surfaces. We consider first the fluctuating shear stress inside a viscoelastic solid which results from the thermal motion of the atoms or molecules…
Adhesive contact between a thin elastic sheet and a substrate in a liquid environment arises in a range of biological, physical and technological applications. By considering the dynamics of this process that naturally couples fluid flow,…
A rigid cylinder placed on a soft gel deforms its surface. When multiple cylinders are placed on the surface, they interact with each other via the topography of the deformed gel which serves as an energy landscape; as they move, the…
The molecular mechanism of slip at the interface between polymer melts and weakly attractive smooth surfaces is investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. In agreement with our previous studies on slip flow of shear-thinning fluids,…
Embedding rigid inclusions into elastic matrix materials is a procedure of high practical relevance, for instance for the fabrication of elastic composite materials. We theoretically analyze the following situation. Rigid spherical…
Biological processes, from morphogenesis to tumor invasion, spontaneously generate shear stresses inside living tissue. The mechanisms that govern the transmission of mechanical forces in epithelia and the collective response of the tissue…
We present fully analytical solutions for the deformation of a stretched soft substrate due to the static wetting of a large liquid droplet, and compare our solutions to recently published experiments (Xu et al, Soft Matter 2018). Following…
The contact between a liquid and an elastic solid generates a stress vector depending on the curvature tensor in each point of the separating surface. For nanometer values of the mean curvature and for suitable materials, the stress vector…
Recently, there has been much interest in using lubricated flat and nano-/micro-structured surfaces to achieve extreme liquid-repellency: any foreign droplet immiscible with the underlying lubricant layer was shown to slide off at a small…
Soft lubrication has been shown to drastically affect the mobility of an object immersed in a viscous fluid in the vicinity of a purely elastic wall. In this theoretical study, we develop a minimal model incorporating viscoelasticity,…
Solids deform and fluids flow, but soft glassy materials, such as emulsions, foams, suspensions, and pastes, exhibit an intricate mix of solid and liquid-like behavior. While much progress has been made to understand their elastic (small…