Spontaneous emergence of motion of an isotropic active particle in a Carreau fluid.

Active particles are self-propelling in nature due to the generation of a fore-aft asymmetry in the concentration of solutes around their surface. Both the surface activity and mobility play an important role in the particle dynamics. The solutes are the products of the chemical reaction between the active particle surface and suspending medium.

Multiparticle collision dynamics simulations of a squirmer in a nematic fluid.

We study the dynamics of a squirmer in a nematic liquid crystal using the multiparticle collision dynamics (MPCD) method. A recently developed nematic MPCD method [Phys. Rev.

Confinement effect on electrically induced dynamics of a droplet in shear flow.

Deformation and breakup of droplets in confined shear flows have been attracting increasing attention from the research community over the past few years, as attributable to their implications in microfluidics and emulsion processing. Reported results in this regard have demonstrated that the primary effect of confinement happens to be the inception of complex oscillating transients, monotonic variation of droplet deformation, and droplet stabilization against breakup, as attributable to wall-induced distortion of the flow field. In sharp contrast to these reported findings, here, we show that a nonintuitive nonmonotonic droplet deformation may occur in a confined shear flow, under the influence of an external electric field.

Multiparticle collision dynamics for tensorial nematodynamics.

Liquid crystals establish a nearly unique combination of thermodynamic, hydrodynamic, and topological behavior. This poses a challenge to their theoretical understanding and modeling. The arena where these effects come together is the mesoscopic (micron) scale.

Transient electroosmosis of a Maxwell fluid in a rotating microchannel.

The transient electroosmotic flow of Maxwell fluid in a rotating microchannel is investigated both analytically and numerically. We bring out the complex dynamics of the flow during the transience due to the combination of rotation and rheological effects. We show the regimes of operation under which our analysis holds the most significance.

Capillary transport of two immiscible fluids in presence of electroviscous retardation.

The transport of two immiscible electrolytes through a narrow confinement whose walls bear a finite surface potential is analyzed through a lumped model by considering the influence of a regulatory self-induced axial electric field, termed as streaming potential. The presence of a surface charge on the channel walls culminates in the aqueous solutions carrying a net charge so as to make the overall system (channel and fluid) electrically neutral. The advection due to pressure driven flow or capillarity in the absence of any externally imposed electric field causes a preferential transport of net charged species.

Effect of surface charge convection and shape deformation on the dielectrophoretic motion of a liquid drop.

The dielectrophoretic motion and shape deformation of a Newtonian liquid drop in an otherwise quiescent Newtonian liquid medium in the presence of an axisymmetric nonuniform dc electric field consisting of uniform and quadrupole components is investigated. The theory put forward by Feng [J. Q.

Droplet migration characteristics in confined oscillatory microflows.

We analyze the migration characteristics of a droplet in an oscillatory flow field in a parallel plate microconfinement. Using phase field formalism, we capture the dynamical evolution of the droplet over a wide range of the frequency of the imposed oscillation in the flow field, drop size relative to the channel gap, and the capillary number. The latter two factors imply the contribution of droplet deformability, commonly considered in the study of droplet migration under steady shear flow conditions.

Streaming potential-modulated capillary filling dynamics of immiscible fluids.

The pressure driven transport of two immiscible electrolytes in a narrow channel with prescribed surface potential (zeta potential) is considered under the influence of a flow-induced electric field. The latter consideration is non-trivially and fundamentally different from the problem of electric field-driven motion (electroosmosis) of two immiscible electrolytes in a channel in a sense that in the former case, the genesis of the induced electric field, termed as streaming potential, is the advection of ions in the absence of any external electric field. As the flow occurs, one fluid displaces the other.

Effect of interfacial slip on the cross-stream migration of a drop in an unbounded Poiseuille flow.

We analyze the motion and deformation of a buoyant drop suspended in an unbounded fluid which is undergoing a quadratic shearing flow at small Reynolds number in the presence of slip at the interface of the drop. The boundary condition at the interface is accounted for by means of a simple Navier slip condition. Expressions for the velocity and the shape deformation of the drop are derived considering small but finite interface deformation, and results are presented for the specific cases of sedimentation, shear flow, and Poiseuille flow with previously reported results as the limiting cases of our general expressions.

Transient dynamics of confined liquid drops in a uniform electric field.

We analyze the effect of confinement on the transient dynamics of liquid drops, suspended in another immiscible liquid medium, under the influence of an externally applied uniform dc electric field. For our analysis, we adhere to an analytical framework conforming to a Newtonian-leaky-dielectric liquid model in the Stokes flow regime, under the small deformation approximation. We characterize the transient relaxation of the drop shape towards its asymptotic configuration, attributed by the combined confluence of the charge-relaxation time scale and the intrinsic shape-relaxation time scale.