Related papers: What is in a pebble shape?
In this note we describe a discrete dynamical system acting on the similarity classes of a plane convex body within the affine class of the body. We find invariant elements in all affine classes, and describe the orbits of bodies in some…
Various properties of fluids consisting of platelike particles differ from the corresponding ones of fluids consisting of spherical particles because interactions between platelets depend on their mutual orientations. One of the main issues…
The analysis of the size distribution of droplets condensing on a substrate (breath figures) is a test ground for scaling theories. Here, we show that a faithful description of these distributions must explicitly deal with the growth…
The description of complex wave processes, in addition to the shoaling problem, is often cumbersome even for the evolution of regular waves. For reflection under the regime of wave breaking, the surf similarity is generally accepted as the…
The spatio-temporal evolution of a downsized model for a desert dune is observed experimentally in a narrow water flow channel. A particle tracking method reveals that the migration speed of the model dune is one order of magnitude smaller…
The diffusion of particles in confining walls forming a tube is discussed. Such a transport phenomenon is observed in biological cells and porous media. We consider the case in which the tube is winding with curvature and torsion, and the…
A simple model of an active colloid consisting of dumbbell-shaped particles that cyclically change their length without propelling themselves is proposed and analyzed. At nanoscales, it represents an idealization for bacterial cytoplasm or…
We consider the rotation of neutrally buoyant axisymmetric particles suspended in isotropic turbulence. Using laboratory experiments as well as numerical and analytical calculations, we explore how particle rotation depends upon particle…
The dynamics of a thin liquid film on the underside of a curved cylindrical substrate is studied. The evolution of the liquid layer is investigated as the film thickness and the radius of curvature of the substrate are varied. A…
We study the flow of equal-volume binary granular mixtures of spheres and dumbbells with different aspect ratios down a rough inclined plane, using the discrete element method. We consider two types of mixtures -- in the first type the…
The shape of a liquid surface bounded by an acute or obtuse planar angular sector is considered by using classical analysis methods. For acute angular sectors the two principal curvatures are of the order of the (fixed) mean curvature. But…
Soft colloids allow to explore high density states well beyond random close packing. An important open question is whether softness controls the dynamics under these dense conditions. While experimental works reported conflicting results,…
Sea ripples are small-scale bedforms which originate from the interaction of an oscillatory flow with an erodible sand bed. The phenomenon of sea ripple formation is investigated by means of direct numerical simulation in which the sediment…
Context. The classical "planetesimal" accretion scenario for the formation of planets has recently evolved with the idea that "pebbles", centimeter- to meter-sized icy grains migrating in protoplanetary disks, can control planetesimal…
We examine homogeneous metrics on spheres and determine which ones have positive sectional curvature. The answer is subtle and surprisingly difficult to prove. In some cases we also determine their pinching constants. This completes the…
The interaction between near-wall turbulence and wall curvature is described for the incompressible flow in a plane channel with a small concave-convex-concave bump on the bottom wall, with height comparable to the wall-normal location of…
Molecular dynamics simulation has been used to model pattern formation in three-dimensional Rayleigh--Benard convection at the discrete-particle level. Two examples are considered, one in which an almost perfect array of hexagonally-shaped…
For low to moderate supersaturations, crystals grow by lateral build-up of new layers. The edges of the layers are known as "steps". We consider the rate of step advance on a flat crystal face under the influence of bulk diffusion in the…
We measure the geometry of a crumpled sheet of paper with laser-aided topography and discuss its statistical properties. The curvature of an elasto-plastic fold scales linearly with applied force. The curvature distribution follows an…
Given a smooth convex cone in the Euclidean $(n+1)$-space ($n\geq2$), we consider strictly mean convex hypersurfaces with boundary which are star-shaped with respect to the center of the cone and which meet the cone perpendicularly. If…