Research
Where the microscopic laws of physics meet the complex behaviour of fluids.
Our work is in theoretical and computational soft condensed matter, centred on the flow of Newtonian and complex fluids: flow instabilities and the transition to turbulence, shear banding, and the swimming of microorganisms. The themes below give a sense of the questions the group works on.
Viscoelastic flow instabilities
- Purely elastic instabilities and turbulence in polymer solutions
- Elasto-inertial turbulence and drag reduction
- Instabilities in shear-banded flows of worm-like micelles
- Stress singularities in extensional flows
Locomotion of microorganisms
- Swimming of individual organisms in water and complex fluids
- Collective motion in microswimmer suspensions
- Enhanced diffusion of tracers
Transition to turbulence
- Exact coherent states in transitional flows
- Directed percolation transition scenario
- Low-dimensional modelling of the transition
Biophysics and active matter
- Pattern formation in mixtures of microtubules and molecular motors
- Bulk rheology and microrheology of active fluids
- Phase separation in active particle suspensions
- Chromosome extrusion
Soft matter
- Micro-objects in flows of Newtonian and complex fluids
- Discontinuous shear thinning
- Reversible plasticity in foams and emulsions
- Microphase separation in block copolymers under shear
- Particle-based simulation methods of soft matter