No Arabic abstract
Red blood cells (RBCs) are the major component of blood and the flow of blood is dictated by that of RBCs. We employ vesicles, which consist of closed bilayer membranes enclosing a fluid, as a model system to study the behavior of RBCs under a confined Poiseuille flow. We extensively explore two main parameters: i) the degree of confinement of vesicles within the channel, and ii) the flow strength. Rich and complex dynamics for vesicles are revealed ranging from steady-state shapes (in the form of parachute and slipper) to chaotic dynamics of shape. Chaos occurs through a cascade of multiple periodic oscillations of the vesicle shape. We summarize our results in a phase diagram in the parameter plane (degree of confinement, flow strength). This finding highlights the level of complexity of a flowing vesicle in the small Reynolds number where the flow is laminar in the absence of vesicles and can be rendered turbulent due to elasticity of vesicles.
We derive the generalized Fokker-Planck equation associated with a Langevin equation driven by arbitrary additive white noise. We apply our result to study the distribution of symmetric and asymmetric L{e}vy flights in an infinitely deep potential well. The fractional Fokker-Planck equation for L{e}vy flights is derived and solved analytically in the steady state. It is shown that L{e}vy flights are distributed according to the beta distribution, whose probability density becomes singular at the boundaries of the well. The origin of the preferred concentration of flying objects near the boundaries in nonequilibrium systems is clarified.
We consider a dilute gas of inelastic hard spheres enclosed in a slab under the action of gravity along the longitudinal direction. In addition, the gas is subject to a white-noise stochastic force that mimics the effect of external vibrations customarily used in experiments to compensate for the collisional cooling. The system is described by means of a kinetic model of the inelastic Boltzmann equation and its steady-state solution is derived through second order in gravity. This solution differs from the Navier-Stokes description in that the hydrostatic pressure is not uniform, normal stress differences are present, a component of the heat flux normal to the thermal gradient exists, and the temperature profile includes a positive quadratic term. As in the elastic case, this new term is responsible for a bimodal shape of the temperature profile. The results show that, except for high inelasticities, the effect of inelasticity on the profiles is to slightly decrease the quantitative deviations from the Navier-Stokes results.
Plane Poiseuille flow past a nanoscale cylinder that is arbitrarily confined (i.e., symmetrically or asymmetrically confined) in a slit channel is studied via hydrodynamic lubrication theory and molecular dynamics simulations, considering cases where the cylinder remains static or undergoes thermal motion. Lubrication theory predictions for the drag force and volumetric flow rate are in close agreement with molecular dynamics simulations of flows having molecularly thin lubrication gaps, despite the presence of significant structural forces induced by the crystalline structure of the modeled solid. While the maximum drag force is observed in symmetric confinement, i.e., when the cylinder is equidistant from both channel walls, the drag decays significantly as the cylinder moves away from the channel centerline and approaches a wall. Hence, significant reductions in the mean drag force on the cylinder and hydraulic resistance of the channel can be observed when thermal motion induces random off-center displacements. Analytical expressions and numerical results in this work provide useful insights into the hydrodynamics of colloidal solids and macromolecules in confinement.
We introduce a general decomposition of the stress tensor for incompressible fluids in terms of its components on a tensorial basis adapted to the local flow conditions, which include extensional flows, simple shear flows, and any type of mixed flows. Such a basis is determined solely by the symmetric part of the velocity gradient and allows for a straightforward interpretation of the non-Newtonian response in any local flow conditions. In steady homogeneous flows, the material functions that represent the components of the stress on the adapted basis generalize and complete the classical set of viscometric functions used to characterize the response in simple shear flows. Such a general decomposition of the stress is effective in coherently organizing and interpreting rheological data from laboratory measurements and computational studies in non-viscometric steady flows of great importance for practical applications. The decomposition of the stress in terms with clearly distinct roles is also useful in developing constitutive models.
The texture of phase space and bifurcation diagrams of two-dimensional discrete maps describing a lattice of interacting oscillators, confined in on-site potentials with deformable double-well shapes, are examined. The two double-well potentials considered belong to a family proposed by Dikande and Kofane (A. M. Dikande and T. C. Kofane, Solid State Commun. vol. 89, p. 559, 1994), whose shapes can be tuned distinctively: one has a variable barrier height and the other has variable minima positions. However the two parametrized double-well potentials reduce to the $phi^4$ substrate, familiar in the studies of structural phase transitions in centro-symmetric crystals or bistable processes in biophysics. It is shown that although the parametric maps are area preserving their routes to chaos display different characteristic features: the first map exhibits a cascade of period-doubling bifurcations with respect to the potential amplitude, but period-halving bifurcations with respect to the shape deformability parameter. On the other hand the first bifurcation of the second map always coincides with the first pitchfork bifurcation of the $phi^4$ map. However, an increase of the deformability parameter shrinks the region between successive period-doubling bifurcations. The two opposite bifurcation cascades characterizing the first map, and the shrinkage of regions between successive bifurcation cascades which is characteristic of the second map, suggest a non-universal character of the Feigenbaum-number sequences associate with the two discrete parametric double-well maps.