1,351 research outputs found
Active elastohydrodynamics of vesicles in narrow, blind constrictions
Fluid-resistance limited transport of vesicles through narrow constrictions
is a recurring theme in many biological and engineering applications. Inspired
by the motor-driven movement of soft membrane-bound vesicles into closed
neuronal dendritic spines, here we study this problem using a combination of
passive three-dimensional simulations and a simplified semi-analytical theory
for active transport of vesicles that are forced through such constrictions by
molecular motors. We show that the motion of these objects is characterized by
two dimensionless quantities related to the geometry and the strength of
forcing relative to the vesicle elasticity. We use numerical simulations to
characterize the transit time for a vesicle forced by fluid pressure through a
constriction in a channel, and find that relative to an open channel, transport
into a blind end leads to the formation of an effective lubrication layer that
strongly impedes motion. When the fluid pressure forcing is complemented by
forces due to molecular motors that are responsible for vesicle trafficking
into dendritic spines, we find that the competition between motor forcing and
fluid drag results in multistable dynamics reminiscent of the real system. Our
study highlights the role of non-local hydrodynamic effects in determining the
kinetics of vesicular transport in constricted geometries
Simulation of fluid flow in hydrophobic rough microchannels
Surface effects become important in microfluidic setups because the surface
to volume ratio becomes large. In such setups the surface roughness is not any
longer small compared to the length scale of the system and the wetting
properties of the wall have an important influence on the flow. However, the
knowledge about the interplay of surface roughness and hydrophobic
fluid-surface interaction is still very limited because these properties cannot
be decoupled easily in experiments.
We investigate the problem by means of lattice Boltzmann (LB) simulations of
rough microchannels with a tunable fluid-wall interaction. We introduce an
``effective no-slip plane'' at an intermediate position between peaks and
valleys of the surface and observe how the position of the wall may change due
to surface roughness and hydrophobic interactions.
We find that the position of the effective wall, in the case of a Gaussian
distributed roughness depends linearly on the width of the distribution.
Further we are able to show that roughness creates a non-linear effect on the
slip length for hydrophobic boundaries.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Simulations of slip flow on nanobubble-laden surfaces
On microstructured hydrophobic surfaces, geometrical patterns may lead to the
appearance of a superhydrophobic state, where gas bubbles at the surface can
have a strong impact on the fluid flow along such surfaces. In particular, they
can strongly influence a detected slip at the surface. We present two-phase
lattice Boltzmann simulations of a flow over structured surfaces with attached
gas bubbles and demonstrate how the detected slip depends on the pattern
geometry, the bulk pressure, or the shear rate. Since a large slip leads to
reduced friction, our results allow to assist in the optimization of
microchannel flows for large throughput.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figure
Lattice Boltzmann simulations of apparent slip in hydrophobic microchannels
Various experiments have found a boundary slip in hydrophobic microchannel
flows, but a consistent understanding of the results is still lacking. While
Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations cannot reach the low shear rates and large
system sizes of the experiments, it is often impossible to resolve the needed
details with macroscopic approaches. We model the interaction between
hydrophobic channel walls and a fluid by means of a multi-phase lattice
Boltzmann model. Our mesoscopic approach overcomes the limitations of MD
simulations and can reach the small flow velocities of known experiments. We
reproduce results from experiments at small Knudsen numbers and other
simulations, namely an increase of slip with increasing liquid-solid
interactions, the slip being independent of the flow velocity, and a decreasing
slip with increasing bulk pressure. Within our model we develop a semi-analytic
approximation of the dependence of the slip on the pressure.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure
Implementation of on-site velocity boundary conditions for D3Q19 lattice Boltzmann
On-site boundary conditions are often desired for lattice Boltzmann
simulations of fluid flow in complex geometries such as porous media or
microfluidic devices. The possibility to specify the exact position of the
boundary, independent of other simulation parameters, simplifies the analysis
of the system. For practical applications it should allow to freely specify the
direction of the flux, and it should be straight forward to implement in three
dimensions. Furthermore, especially for parallelized solvers it is of great
advantage if the boundary condition can be applied locally, involving only
information available on the current lattice site. We meet this need by
describing in detail how to transfer the approach suggested by Zou and He to a
D3Q19 lattice. The boundary condition acts locally, is independent of the
details of the relaxation process during collision and contains no artificial
slip. In particular, the case of an on-site no-slip boundary condition is
naturally included. We test the boundary condition in several setups and
confirm that it is capable to accurately model the velocity field up to second
order and does not contain any numerical slip.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, revised versio
Emulsification in binary liquids containing colloidal particles: a structure-factor analysis
We present a quantitative confocal-microscopy study of the transient and
final microstructure of particle-stabilised emulsions formed via demixing in a
binary liquid. To this end, we have developed an image-analysis method that
relies on structure factors obtained from discrete Fourier transforms of
individual frames in confocal image sequences. Radially averaging the squared
modulus of these Fourier transforms before peak fitting allows extraction of
dominant length scales over the entire temperature range of the quench. Our
procedure even yields information just after droplet nucleation, when the
(fluorescence) contrast between the two separating phases is scarcely
discernable in the images. We find that our emulsions are stabilised on
experimental time scales by interfacial particles and that they are likely to
have bimodal droplet-size distributions. We attribute the latter to coalescence
together with creaming being the main coarsening mechanism during the late
stages of emulsification and we support this claim with (direct)
confocal-microscopy observations. In addition, our results imply that the
observed droplets emerge from particle-promoted nucleation, possibly followed
by a free-growth regime. Finally, we argue that creaming strongly affects
droplet growth during the early stages of emulsification. Future investigations
could clarify the link between quench conditions and resulting microstructure,
paving the way for tailor-made particle-stabilised emulsions from binary
liquids.Comment: http://iopscience.iop.org/0953-8984/22/45/455102
Quantitative analysis of numerical estimates for the permeability of porous media from lattice-Boltzmann simulations
During the last decade, lattice-Boltzmann (LB) simulations have been improved
to become an efficient tool for determining the permeability of porous media
samples. However, well known improvements of the original algorithm are often
not implemented. These include for example multirelaxation time schemes or
improved boundary conditions, as well as different possibilities to impose a
pressure gradient. This paper shows that a significant difference of the
calculated permeabilities can be found unless one uses a carefully selected
setup. We present a detailed discussion of possible simulation setups and
quantitative studies of the influence of simulation parameters. We illustrate
our results by applying the algorithm to a Fontainebleau sandstone and by
comparing our benchmark studies to other numerical permeability measurements in
the literature.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure
From dot to ring: the role of friction on the deposition pattern of a drying colloidal suspension droplet
The deposition of particles on a substrate by drying a colloidal suspension
droplet is at the core of applications ranging from traditional printing on
paper to printable electronics or photovoltaic devices. The self-pinning
induced by the accumulation of particles at the contact line plays an important
role in the formation of the deposition. In this paper, we investigate both
numerically and theoretically, the effect of friction between the particles and
the substrate on the deposition pattern. Without friction, the contact line
shows a stick-slip behaviour and a dot-like deposit is left after the droplet
is evaporated. By increasing the friction force, we observe a transition from a
dot-like to a ring-like deposit. We propose a theoretical model to predict the
effective radius of the particle deposition as a function of the friction
force. Our theoretical model predicts a critical friction force when the
self-pinning happens and the effective radius of deposit increases with
increasing friction force, confirmed by our simulation results. Our results can
find implications for developing active control strategies for the deposition
of drying droplets.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure
Solubility isotope effects in aqueous solutions of methane
The isotope effect on the Henry's law coefficients of methane in
aqueous solution (H/D and C-12/C-13 substitution) are interpreted using
the statistical mechanical theory of condensed phase isotope effects.
The missing spectroscopic data needed for the implementation of the
theory were obtained either experimentally (infrared measurements), by
computer simulation (molecular dynamics technique), or estimated using
the Wilson's GF matrix method. The order of magnitude and sign of both
solute isotope effects can be predicted by the theory. Even a crude
estimation based on data from previous vapor pressure isotope effect
studies of pure methane at low temperature can explain the inverse
effect found for the solubility of deuterated methane in water. (C)
2002 American Institute of Physics
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