Models of polymer solutions in electrified jets and solution blowing

Fluid flows hosting electrical phenomena are the subject of a fascinating and highly interdisciplinary scientific field. In recent years, the extraordinary success of electrospinning and solution-blowing technologies for the generation of polymer nanofibers has motivated vibrant research aiming at rationalizing the behavior of viscoelastic jets under applied electric fields or other stretching fields including gas streams.

Bounds in Total Variation Distance for Discrete-time Processes on the Sequence Space

Let P and (P) over tilde be the laws of two discrete-time stochastic processes defined on the sequence space S-N,where S is a finite set of points. In this paper we derive a bound on the total variation distance d(TV)(P, (P) over tilde) in terms of the cylindrical projections of P and (P) over tilde. We apply the result to Markov chains with finite state space and random walks on Z with not necessarily independent increments, and we consider several examples.

MODELING AND SIMULATION OF INDIVIDUALS BEHAVIOUR ON BIOLOGICAL NETWORKS

Here we present some studies on the behavior of individuals in a biological networks. The first study is about Physarum polycephalum slime mold and its ability to find the shortest path in a maze. Here we present a PDE chemotaxis model that reproduce its behavior in a network, schematized as a planar graph, (1). In particular, suitable transmission and boundary conditions at each node of the graph are considered to mimic the choice of such an organism to move from an arc to another arc of the network, motivated by the search for food.

Auto-adaptive Tikhonov regularization of water vapor profiles: application to FORUM measurements

In this paper, we study the retrieval of water vapor profiles from simulated FORUM measurements. We show that the bias towards the a-priori introduced by the Optimal Estimation technique can be reduced by using larger errors for the a-priori. Reducing the strength of the a-priori may, however, cause unphysical oscillations in the resulting profiles because of the ill-conditioning of the retrieval problem. An a-posteriori regularization technique, the Iterative Variable Strength method, is thus applied to reduce the amplitude of the oscillations.

Multiparticle collision dynamics for fluid interfaces with near-contact interactions

We present an extension of the multiparticle collision dynamics method for flows with complex interfaces, including supramolecular near-contact interactions mimicking the effect of surfactants. The new method is demonstrated for the case of (i) short range repulsion of droplets in close contact, (ii) arrested phase separation, and (iii) different pattern formation during spinodal decomposition of binary mixtures.

Lattice Boltzmann simulations capture the multiscale physics of soft flowing crystals

The study of the underlying physics of soft flowing materials depends heavily on numerical simulations, due to the complex structure of the governing equations reflecting the competition of concurrent mechanisms acting at widely disparate scales in space and time. A full-scale computational modelling remains a formidable challenge since it amounts to simultaneously handling six or more spatial decades in space and twice as many in time.

Soft channel formation and symmetry breaking in exotic active emulsions

We use computer simulations to study the morphology and rheological properties of a bidimensional emulsion resulting from a mixture of a passive isotropic fluid and an active contractile polar gel, in the presence of a surfactant that favours the emulsification of the two phases. By varying the intensity of the contractile activity and of an externally imposed shear flow, we find three possible morphologies. For low shear rates, a simple lamellar state is obtained.