Coarse-Grained MD Simulations of the Capillary Interaction between a Sphere and a Binary Fluid with Truncated Lennard-Jones Potentials.

In atomic force microscopy experiments on fluid samples, a capillary bridge forms between the tip and the fluid, causing an attractive capillary force. Here, we present a computational model of the capillary interaction between a solid sphere and a coarse-grained Lennard-Jones fluid containing 10% antifreeze particles with an enlarged van der Waals radius. The capillary force acting on the sphere is obtained from the displacement of the sphere in a trap potential as the sphere is incrementally approached and then retracted from the fluid.

Rate-independent hysteretic energy dissipation in collagen fibrils.

Nanoindentation cycles measured with an atomic force microscope on hydrated collagen fibrils exhibit a rate-independent hysteresis with return point memory. This previously unknown energy dissipation mechanism describes in unified form elastoplastic indentation, capillary adhesion, and surface leveling at indentation velocities smaller than 1 μm s, where viscous friction is negligible. A generic hysteresis model, based on force-distance data measured during one large approach-retract cycle, predicts the force (output) and the dissipated energy for arbitrary indentation trajectories (input).

Differentiation of Monofloral Honey Using Volatile Organic Compounds by HS-GCxIMS.

Honey is a natural product and can be described by its botanical origin, determined by the plants from which the bees collect nectar. It significantly influences the taste of honey and is often used as a quality criterion. Unfortunately, this opens up the possibility of food fraud.

Dynamics of a driven harmonic oscillator coupled to pairwise interacting Ising spins in random fields.

In general we are interested in dynamical systems coupled to complex hysteresis. Therefore as a first step we investigated recently the dynamics of a periodically driven damped harmonic oscillator coupled to independent Ising spins in a random field. Although such a system does not produce hysteresis, we showed how to characterize the dynamics of such a piecewise-smooth system, especially in the case of a large number of spins [Zech, Otto, and Radons, Phys.