Spring 2015
Seminars are held on Mondays from 1:30 - 2:30PM in Cullimore Hall, Room 611, unless noted otherwise. For questions about the seminar schedule, please contact David Shirokoff.
Date: April 27, 2015
Speaker: Emilie Dressaire
Polytechnic School of Engineering,
New York University
Title: "Interfacial Responses to Mechanical Forcings"
Abstract:
Interfaces strongly influence the properties of multiphasic systems, both natural and engineered. In this seminar, I will present two examples of recent work showing that the shape of an air/liquid interface is controlled by mechanical forcings. Understanding how to mechanically tune the response of an interface can lead to important applications in industrial processes such as materials processing and fabrication, and liquid transportation.
The first part of this seminar will focus on the wetting of fibers by a small volume of liquid and demonstrate the influence of mechanical parameters on the resulting morphology of the liquid. In particular, I will show that the possibility to tune the morphology is interesting to control the drying of fibrous media. In the second part of the talk, I will consider the sloshing that occurs when a partially filled container is set in motion. This mechanical forcing, which occurs when we walk with a beverage, is so familiar that you may have wondered why coffee spills more easily than beer. Our study indicates that the addition of foam at an air/liquid interface can be used to passively damp the sloshing, i.e. the oscillation of the interface, and to avoid the spilling of the liquid.