12,820 research outputs found
Statistics of Bubble Rearrangements in a Slowly Sheared Two-dimensional Foam
Many physical systems exhibit plastic flow when subjected to slow steady
shear. A unified picture of plastic flow is still lacking; however, there is an
emerging theoretical understanding of such flows based on irreversible motions
of the constituent ``particles'' of the material. Depending on the specific
system, various irreversible events have been studied, such as T1 events in
foam and shear transformation zones (STZ's) in amorphous solids. This paper
presents an experimental study of the T1 events in a model, two-dimensional
foam: bubble rafts. In particular, I report on the connection between the
distribution of T1 events and the behavior of the average stress and average
velocity profiles during both the initial elastic response of the bubble raft
and the subsequent plastic flow at sufficiently high strains
Droplet evaporation in one-component fluids: Dynamic van der Waals theory
In a one-component fluid, we investigate evaporation of a small axysymmetric
liquid droplet in the partial wetting condition on a heated wall at . In the dynamic van der Waals theory (Phys. Rev. E {\bf 75}, 036304
(2007)), we take into account the latent heat transport from liquid to gas upon
evaporation. Along the gas-liquid interface, the temperature is nearly equal to
the equilibrium coexisting temperature away from the substrate, but it rises
sharply to the wall temperature close to the substrate. On an isothermal
substrate, evaporation takes place mostly on a narrow interface region near the
contact line in a late stage, which is a characteristic feature in
one-component fluids.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Impact of boundaries on velocity profiles in bubble rafts
Under conditions of sufficiently slow flow, foams, colloids, granular matter,
and various pastes have been observed to exhibit shear localization, i.e.
regions of flow coexisting with regions of solid-like behavior. The details of
such shear localization can vary depending on the system being studied. A
number of the systems of interest are confined so as to be quasi-two
dimensional, and an important issue in these systems is the role of the
confining boundaries. For foams, three basic systems have been studied with
very different boundary conditions: Hele-Shaw cells (bubbles confined between
two solid plates); bubble rafts (a single layer of bubbles freely floating on a
surface of water); and confined bubble rafts (bubbles confined between the
surface of water below and a glass plate on top). Often, it is assumed that the
impact of the boundaries is not significant in the ``quasi-static limit'', i.e.
when externally imposed rates of strain are sufficiently smaller than internal
kinematic relaxation times. In this paper, we directly test this assumption for
rates of strain ranging from to . This
corresponds to the quoted quasi-static limit in a number of previous
experiments. It is found that the top plate dramatically alters both the
velocity profile and the distribution of nonlinear rearrangements, even at
these slow rates of strain.Comment: New figures added, revised version accepted for publication in Phys.
Rev.
Thermodiffusion in model nanofluids by molecular dynamics simulations
In this work, a new algorithm is proposed to compute single particle
(infinite dilution) thermodiffusion using Non-Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics
simulations through the estimation of the thermophoretic force that applies on
a solute particle. This scheme is shown to provide consistent results for
simple Lennard-Jones fluids and for model nanofluids (spherical non-metallic
nanoparticles + Lennard-Jones fluid) where it appears that thermodiffusion
amplitude, as well as thermal conductivity, decrease with nanoparticles
concentration. Then, in nanofluids in the liquid state, by changing the nature
of the nanoparticle (size, mass and internal stiffness) and of the solvent
(quality and viscosity) various trends are exhibited. In all cases the single
particle thermodiffusion is positive, i.e. the nanoparticle tends to migrate
toward the cold area. The single particle thermal diffusion 2 coefficient is
shown to be independent of the size of the nanoparticle (diameter of 0.8 to 4
nm), whereas it increases with the quality of the solvent and is inversely
proportional to the viscosity of the fluid. In addition, this coefficient is
shown to be independent of the mass of the nanoparticle and to increase with
the stiffness of the nanoparticle internal bonds. Besides, for these
configurations, the mass diffusion coefficient behavior appears to be
consistent with a Stokes-Einstein like law
Evidence for correlated changes in the spectrum and composition of cosmic rays at extremely high energies
Journal ArticleThe Utah Fly's Eye detector has revealed a change in the cosmic ray composition which is correlated with structure in the all-particle energy spectrum. The data can be fitted by a simple model of a steep power law spectrum of heavy nuclei which is overtaken at high energies by a flatter spectrum of protons. The transition occurs near 10^18.5 eV. Anisotropy is not detected, so the high-rigidity particles above the transition energy do not originate in the disk of the Galaxy. An outstanding event of 3x10^20 eV implies that the highest energy particles originate in the contemporary era of the Universe
Signature of elasticity in the Faraday instability
We investigate the onset of the Faraday instability in a vertically vibrated
wormlike micelle solution. In this strongly viscoelastic fluid, the critical
acceleration and wavenumber are shown to present oscillations as a function of
driving frequency and fluid height. This effect, unseen neither in simple
fluids nor in previous experiments on polymeric fluids, is interpreted in terms
of standing elastic waves between the disturbed surface and the container
bottom. It is shown that the model of S. Kumar [Phys. Rev. E, {\bf 65}, 026305
(2002)] for a viscoelastic fluid accounts qualitatively for our experimental
observations. Explanations for quantitative discrepancies are proposed, such as
the influence of the nonlinear rheological behaviour of this complex fluid.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Lattice-Boltzmann Method for Non-Newtonian Fluid Flows
We study an ad hoc extension of the Lattice-Boltzmann method that allows the
simulation of non-Newtonian fluids described by generalized Newtonian models.
We extensively test the accuracy of the method for the case of shear-thinning
and shear-thickening truncated power-law fluids in the parallel plate geometry,
and show that the relative error compared to analytical solutions decays
approximately linear with the lattice resolution. Finally, we also tested the
method in the reentrant-flow geometry, in which the shear-rate is no-longer a
scalar and the presence of two singular points requires high accuracy in order
to obtain satisfactory resolution in the local stress near these points. In
this geometry, we also found excellent agreement with the solutions obtained by
standard finite-element methods, and the agreement improves with higher lattice
resolution
Dynamic van der Waals Theory of two-phase fluids in heat flow
We present a dynamic van der Waals theory. It is useful to study phase
separation when the temperature varies in space. We show that if heat flow is
applied to liquid suspending a gas droplet at zero gravity, a convective flow
occurs such that the temperature gradient within the droplet nearly vanishes.
As the heat flux is increased, the droplet becomes attached to the heated wall
that is wetted by liquid in equilibrium. In one case corresponding to partial
wetting by gas, an apparent contact angle can be defined. In the ther case with
larger heat flux, the droplet completely wets the heated wall expelling liquid.Comment: 6pages, 8figure
Screening effects in flow through rough channels
A surprising similarity is found between the distribution of hydrodynamic
stress on the wall of an irregular channel and the distribution of flux from a
purely Laplacian field on the same geometry. This finding is a direct outcome
from numerical simulations of the Navier-Stokes equations for flow at low
Reynolds numbers in two-dimensional channels with rough walls presenting either
deterministic or random self-similar geometries. For high Reynolds numbers,
when inertial effects become relevant, the distribution of wall stresses on
deterministic and random fractal rough channels becomes substantially dependent
on the microscopic details of the walls geometry. In addition, we find that,
while the permeability of the random channel follows the usual decrease with
Reynolds, our results indicate an unexpected permeability increase for the
deterministic case, i.e., ``the rougher the better''. We show that this complex
behavior is closely related with the presence and relative intensity of
recirculation zones in the reentrant regions of the rough channel.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Anomalous lateral diffusion in a viscous membrane surrounded by viscoelastic media
We investigate the lateral dynamics in a purely viscous lipid membrane
surrounded by viscoelastic media such as polymeric solutions. We first obtain
the generalized frequency-dependent mobility tensor and focus on the case when
the solvent is sandwiched by hard walls. Due to the viscoelasticity of the
solvent, the mean square displacement of a disk embedded in the membrane
exhibits an anomalous diffusion. An useful relation which connects the mean
square displacement and the solvent modulus is provided. We also calculate the
cross-correlation of the particle displacements which can be applied for
two-particle tracking experiments.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure
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