Shendruk_36374.pdf (6.87 MB)
Dancing disclinations in confined active nematics
journal contribution
posted on 2018-12-10, 11:54 authored by Tyler Shendruk, Amin Doostmohammadi, Kristian Thijssen, Julia M. YeomansThe spontaneous emergence of collective flows is a generic property of active fluids and often leads to
chaotic flow patterns characterised by swirls, jets, and topological disclinations in their orientation field.
However, the ability to achieve structured flows and ordered disclinations is of particular importance in
the design and control of active systems. By confining an active nematic fluid within a channel, we find
a regular motion of disclinations, in conjunction with a well defined and dynamic vortex lattice. As pairs
of moving disclinations travel through the channel, they continually exchange partners producing
a dynamic ordered state, reminiscent of Ceilidh dancing. We anticipate that this biomimetic ability to
self-assemble organised topological disclinations and dynamically structured flow fields in engineered
geometries will pave the road towards establishing new active topological microfluidic devices.
Funding
This work was supported through funding from the ERC Advanced Grant 291234 MiCE and we acknowledge EMBO funding to TNS (ALTF181-2013).
History
School
- Science
Department
- Mathematical Sciences
Published in
Soft MatterVolume
13Issue
21Pages
3853 - 3862Citation
SHENDRUK, T.N. ... et al., 2017. Dancing disclinations in confined active nematics. Soft Matter, 13(21), pp. 3853-3862.Publisher
© The Royal Society of ChemistryVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2017-03-04Publication date
2017Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Soft Matter and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1039/C6SM02310JISSN
1744-683XeISSN
1744-6848Publisher version
Language
- en