Fluids articles within Nature Physics

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active flows in biological systems swirl. A coupling between active flows, elongated deformations and defect dynamics helps preserve self-organised structures against disordered swirling.

    • Louise C. Head
    • , Claire Doré
    •  & Tyler N. Shendruk

  • Research Briefing |

    Drops sitting on an array of parallel fibres spontaneously move along the fibres when subject to an airflow perpendicular to the array. The drops show long-range aerodynamic interactions with their downstream and upstream neighbours, and these can catalyse drop coalescence and removal of drops from the fibres — relevant for applications such as fog harvesting and filtration.

  • Article |

    The wetting behaviour of drops attached to fibres is exploited in many applications including fog harvesting. The presence of a background air flow on fibre-attached drops on parallel fibres is now shown to lead to alignment, repulsion and coalescence processes.

    • Jessica L. Wilson
    • , Amir A. Pahlavan
    •  & Howard A. Stone

  • Article |

    A bursting bubble produces a jet drop previously estimated to be too large to contribute to aerosolization. Oil-coated bubbles produce fast and thin jets, which break up into much smaller drops with potential implications for airborne transmission.

    • Zhengyu Yang
    • , Bingqiang Ji
    •  & Jie Feng

  • Article |

    Determining the properties that emerge from the equations that govern turbulent flow is a fundamental challenge in non-equilibrium physics. A hydrodynamic theory for two-dimensional active nematic fluids at vanishing Reynolds number is now put forward, revealing a universal scaling behaviour for this class of systems.

    • Ricard Alert
    • , Jean-François Joanny
    •  & Jaume Casademunt

  • Letter |

    In a process dubbed elastic ripening, compressive stresses in a polymer network are shown to suppress phase separation of the solvent that swells it, stabilizing mixtures well beyond the liquid–liquid phase separation boundary.

    • Kathryn A. Rosowski
    • , Tianqi Sai
    •  & Eric R. Dufresne

  • Article |

    A chiral fluid comprising spinning colloidal magnets exhibits macroscopic dynamics reminiscent of the free surface flows of Newtonian fluids, together with unique features suggestive of Hall—or odd—viscosity.

    • Vishal Soni
    • , Ephraim S. Bililign
    •  & William T. M. Irvine

  • Article |

    Braiding by topological defects in an active nematic fluid produces macroscopic chaotic advection, such that the defects themselves act as effective stirring rods. The resultant mixing is revealed to be a result of sliding on a molecular scale.

    • Amanda J. Tan
    • , Eric Roberts
    •  & Linda S. Hirst

  • Article |

    A liquid droplet is shown to slide across a solid surface subject to friction forces analogous with those between two solids. The phenomenon is generic, and closes a gap in our understanding of liquid–solid friction.

    • Nan Gao
    • , Florian Geyer
    •  & Rüdiger Berger

  • Article |

    Chameleons rely on strong adhesion to manoeuvre prey with their tongues at high speeds across distances up to twice their body length. A large contact area and high mucus viscosity are shown to engender an efficient capture mechanism.

    • Fabian Brau
    • , Déborah Lanterbecq
    •  & Pascal Damman

  • News & Views |

    A 2006 Nature Physics paper reported phonons in a one-dimensional crystal of aqueous droplets traversing a laminar oil flow — putting microfluidics on the map as a tool for unravelling the mechanisms behind regularity in thermodynamically open systems.

    • Piotr Garstecki
    •  & Robert Hołyst

  • News & Views |

    When a bubble bursts at a liquid–gas interface, a portion of gas is released from the liquid. Now, another, counterintuitive process is reported: rapid motion generated by bubble-bursting transports oil droplets from the surface into the interior of a volume of water.

    • Jens Eggers

  • Article |

    When a bubble bursts on reaching a surface, mass transfer from the liquid to the gas phase can occur—aerosol dispersion. Now, the inverse transport process is reported: submicrometre-sized oil droplets, formed during bubble-bursting, are zipped across the interface to the liquid phase.

    • Jie Feng
    • , Matthieu Roché
    •  & Howard A. Stone

  • Letter |

    When a water drop bounces back from a hydrophobic surface, its initial, spherical shape is usually restored. Now, experiments with a specially engineered superhydrophobic surface made from micrometre-sized tapered pillars covered with copper oxide ‘nanoflowers’ show that droplets can bounce back with a flat, pancake-like shape.

    • Yahua Liu
    • , Lisa Moevius
    •  & Zuankai Wang

  • News & Views |

    Experiments in microfluidics reveal long-range orientational correlations in the velocities of flowing droplets that can be rationalized in terms of an analytically solvable model.

    • Howard A. Stone
    •  & Shashi Thutupalli

  • Letter |

    Ensembles of micrometre-sized water droplets in a laminar oil flow are ideal systems for studying non-equilibrium dynamics. In the case of two-dimensional confinement, the interactions between the droplets’ flow-induced dipole moments lead to long-range velocity correlations and four-fold angular symmetry—behaviour that can be understood from first-principle hydrodynamics calculations.

    • Itamar Shani
    • , Tsevi Beatus
    •  & Tsvi Tlusty

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