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Fluid Dynamics Seminar

Tuesday, March 20, 2007, 4:00 PM
Cullimore Lecture Hall II
New Jersey Institute of Technology

Microhydrodynamics of soft particles

Petia Vlahovska

Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College

Abstract

The dynamics of deformable particles such as drops and cells in flow represents a long standing problem of interest in many branches of science and engineering, for instance because of its relevance to the rheology of emulsions and biological suspensions such as blood. The problem is challenging because the shape of these "soft" particles is not given a priori but is governed by the balance between interfacial forces, e.g. due to stretching and/or bending of the interface, and fluid stresses. In this talk I will present theoretical analyses of the behavior of a surfactant-covered drop and a vesicle (formed by a closed lipid bilayer membrane) in linear flows.