English

Singular viscoelastic perturbation to soft lubrication

Soft Condensed Matter 2024-07-08 v1 Chemical Physics Classical Physics

Abstract

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, carrying out a perturbation analysis in both the elastic deformation of the wall and its viscous damping. Our approach reveals the singular-perturbation nature of viscoelasticity to soft lubrication. Numerical resolution of the resulting non-linear, singular and coupled equations of motion reveals peculiar effects of viscoelasticity on confined colloidal mobility, opening the way towards the description of complex migration scenarios near realistic polymeric substrates and biological membranes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.04319,
  title  = {Singular viscoelastic perturbation to soft lubrication},
  author = {Bharti Bharti and Quentin Ferreira and Aditya Jha and Andreas Carlson and David S. Dean and Yacine Amarouchene and Tak Shing Chan and Thomas Salez},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.04319},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:29:53.306Z