Interfacial Responses to Mechanical Forcings

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering

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 can be tuned by mechanical forcings. The first part of this seminar will focus on the wetting of fibrous media and demonstrate the influence of geometrical parameters on the resulting morphology of the liquid. In particular, I will show that the possibility to tune the morphology allows to control the drying of fibrous media. In the second part of the talk, I will consider the sloshing, i.e. the oscillation of the interface, 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 and to avoid the spilling of the liquid.