Julia Yeomans OBE FRS

Abstract:

We investigate the effects of polymer chains and nanoparticles on the deformation of a droplet in shear and extensional flow using computational modeling that accounts for both the solid and fluid phases explicitly. We show that under shear flow, both the nanoparticles and the encapsulated polymers reduce the shear-induced deformation of the droplet at intermediate capillary numbers. At high capillary numbers, however, long polymer chains can induce the breakup of the droplet. We find that the latter behavior is dependent on the nature of the imposed flow. Specifically, under extensional flow, long polymers inhibit the droplet breakup and reduce deformation. Overall, the findings provide guidelines for tailoring the stability of filled droplets under an imposed flow, and thus, the results can provide useful design rules in a range of technological applications. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.

Abstract:

We describe in detail the hydrodynamics of a simple model of linked sphere swimmers. We calculate the asymptotic form of both the time averaged flow field generated by a single swimmer and the interactions between swimmers in a dilute suspension, showing how each depends on the parameters describing the swimmer and its swimming stroke. We emphasize the importance of time reversal symmetry in determining the far field flow around a swimmer and show that the interactions between swimmers are highly dependent on the relative phase of their swimming strokes.