Related papers: Erosion waves: transverse instabilities and finger…
We perform a laboratory-scale experiment of submarine avalanches on a rough inclined plane. A sediment layer is prepared and thereafter tilted up to an angle lower than the spontaneous avalanche angle. The sediment is scrapped until an…
Avalanche experiments on an erodible substrate are treated in the framework of ``partial fluidization'' model of dense granular flows. The model identifies a family of propagating soliton-like avalanches with shape and velocity controlled…
When particles settle through a stable temperature or salinity gradient they can drive an instability known as sedimentary fingering convection. This phenomenon is thought to occur beneath sediment-rich river plumes in lakes and oceans, in…
We report here on a laboratory-scale experiment which reproduces a rich variety of natural patterns with few control parameters. In particular, we focus on intriguing rhomboid structures often found on sandy shores and flats. We show that…
Interfacial instability is highly relevant to many important biological processes. A key example arises in wound healing experiments, which observe that an epithelial layer with an initially straight edge does not heal uniformly. We…
We investigate the formation of fingered flow in dry granular media under simulated rainfall using a quasi-2D experimental set-up composed of a random close packing of mono-disperse glass beads. Using controlled experiments, we analyze the…
We derive a minimal continuum model to investigate the hydrodynamic mechanism behind the fingering instability recently discovered in a suspension of microrollers near a floor [Driscoll et al. Nature Physics, 2016]. Our model, consisting of…
The invasion of one fluid into another of higher viscosity in a quasi-two dimensional geometry typically produces complex fingering patterns. Because interfacial tension suppresses short-wavelength fluctuations, its elimination by using…
Collective cell migration plays a crucial role in many developmental processes that underlie morphogenesis, wound healing, or cancer progression. In such coordinated behaviours, cells are organised in coherent structures and actively…
Gravity-driven flows of granular matter are involved in a wide variety of situations, ranging from industrial processes to geophysical phenomena, such as avalanches or landslides. These flows are characterized by the coexistence of solid…
We investigate the viscous fingering instability that arises when air is injected from the end of an oil-filled, compliant channel. We show that induced axial and transverse depth gradients foster novel pattern formation. Moreover, the…
We identify a fundamental morphological instability of mobile dislocations in crystals and related line defects. A positive gradient in the local driving force along the direction of defect motion destabilizes long-wavelength vibrational…
Stably-stratified layers may be present at the top of the electrically-conducting fluid layers of many planets either because the temperature gradient is locally subadiabatic or because a stable composition gradient is maintained by the…
A granular instability driven by gravity is studied experimentally and numerically. The instability arises as grains fall in a closed Hele-Shaw cell where a layer of dense granular material is positioned above a layer of air. The initially…
Various experimental settings that involve drying solutions or suspensions of nanoparticles -- often called nanofluids -- have recently been used to produce structured nanoparticle layers. In addition to the formation of polygonal networks…
A linear analysis of thermal diffusion and Maxwell equations is applied to study the thermomagnetic instability in a type-II superconducting slab. It is shown that the instability can lead to formation of spatially nonuniform distributions…
The dynamics of a "peeling front" or an elastic line is studied under creep (constant load) conditions. Our experiments show an exponential dependence of the creep velocity on the inverse force (mass) applied. In particular, the dynamical…
We sandwich a colloidal gel between two parallel plates and induce a radial flow by lifting the upper plate at a constant velocity. Two distinct scenarios result from such a tensile test: ($i$) stable flows during which the gel undergoes a…
We experimentally study the viscous fingering instability in a fluid-fluid phase separated colloid-polymer mixture by means of laser scanning confocal microscopy and microfluidics. We focus on three aspects of the instability. (i) The…
A thin solid (e.g., paper), burning against an oxidizing wind, develops a fingering instability with two decoupled length scales. The spacing between fingers is determined by the P\'eclet number (ratio between advection and diffusion). The…