This paper deals with a theoretical study of the shear thickening effects in concentrated suspensions of non-Brownian particles. Our analysis shows that an increase of the shear rate of the suspension flow leads to a decrease of the mean thickness of the gaps between the nearest particles in dense suspensions. In turn, this leads to the growth of energy dissipation in these gaps, which means an increase of the suspension effective viscosity with the shear rate.

We study an effective method to recover dynamic activity in coupled oscillator networks that have been damaged and lost oscillatory dynamics owing to some inactivated or deteriorated oscillator elements. Recovery of the dynamic behavior can be achieved by newly connecting intact oscillators to the network. We analytically and numerically examine the proportion of the oscillators that are needed to be supported by intact oscillators for recovery of oscillation dynamics. Our results show that it can be more effective to preferentially support active oscillators in the damaged network than to preferentially support inactivated ones. The conditions for this counterintuitive result are discussed. Our framework could be a theoretical foundation for understanding regeneration of oscillatory dynamics in physical and biological systems.

Characterizing complex patterns arising from horizontal oil-water two-phase flows is a contemporary and challenging problem of paramount importance. We design a new multisector conductance sensor and systematically carry out horizontal oil-water two-phase flow experiments for measuring multivariate signals of different flow patterns. We then infer multivariate recurrence networks from these experimental data and investigate local cross-network properties for each constructed network. Our results demonstrate that a cross-clustering coefficient from a multivariate recurrence network is very sensitive to transitions among different flow patterns and recovers quantitative insights into the flow behavior underlying horizontal oil-water flows. These properties render multivariate recurrence networks particularly powerful for investigating a horizontal oil-water two-phase flow system and its complex interacting components from a network perspective.

The concept of the electromagnetic wave transparency is introduced into the thermal field. The conditions of the thermal transparency for a multilayered sphere with isotropic coatings, a coated spheroid with an isotropic coating, and a coated sphere with a radial anisotropic core or a radial anisotropic coat are deduced with the help of the idea of the neutral inclusion. The thermal transparency can be achieved by making the effective thermal conductivity of the composite inclusion equal to the thermal conductivity of the surrounding matrix. The validity of the theoretical analysis is checked by the corresponding simulated results, which indicate that the designed neutral inclusion can be transparent perfectly. A specific case of interest of the thermal transparency is its application to cancel the thermal stress concentration resulting from the existence of the inclusions in the particle (even the thermal-insulated particle) -reinforced composites.

A lattice Boltzmann (LB) method is presented for solving the energy conservation equation in two phases when the phase change effects are included in the model. This approach employs multiple distribution functions, one for a pseudotemperature scalar variable and the rest for the various species. A nonideal equation of state (EOS) is introduced by using a pseudopotential LB model. The evolution equation for the pseudotemperature variable is constructed in such a manner that in the continuum limit one recovers the well known macroscopic energy conservation equation for the mixtures. Heats of reaction, the enthalpy change associated with the phase change, and the diffusive transport of enthalpy are all taken into account; but the dependence of enthalpy on pressure, which is usually a small effect in most nonisothermal flows encountered in chemical reaction systems, is ignored. The energy equation is coupled to the LB equations for species transport and pseudopotential interaction forces through the EOS by using the filtered local pseudotemperature field. The proposed scheme is validated against simple test problems for which analytical solutions can readily be obtained.

The surface of a thin liquid film with nonconstant curvature flattens as a result of capillary forces. While this leveling is driven by local curvature gradients, the global boundary conditions greatly influence the dynamics. Here, we study the evolution of rectangular trenches in a polystyrene nanofilm. Initially, when the two sides of a trench are well separated, the asymmetric boundary condition given by the step height controls the dynamics. In this case, the evolution results from the leveling of two noninteracting steps. As the steps broaden further and start to interact, the global symmetric boundary condition alters the leveling dynamics. We report on full agreement between theory and experiments for the capillary-driven flow and resulting time dependent height profiles, a crossover in the power-law dependence of the viscous energy dissipation as a function of time as the trench evolution transitions from two noninteracting to interacting steps, and the convergence of the profiles to a universal self-similar attractor that is given by the Green's function of the linear operator describing the dimensionless linearized thin film equation.

It is known that the governing equations for the evolution of the envelope of weakly nonlinear capillary-gravity wave packets, the so-called Davey-Stewartson equation, admit dromion solutions in the limit of shallow water and strong surface tension, i.e., when $kh\ll 1$ and the Bond number (Bo) $\equiv T/\rho g{h}^2>1/3$ (where $T$ is the surface tension coefficient and $h$ the water depth). Here we show that capillary-gravity dromions exist beyond this limit for a broad range of finite water depths, i.e., for $kh⩾O\left(1\right)$, as well as for subcritical Bond numbers, i.e., for $\mathrm{Bo}<1/3$.

We investigate, using the hierarchy method, the entanglement and the excitation transfer efficiency of the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex under two different local modifications: the suppression of transitions between particular sites and localized changes to the protein environment. We find that inhibiting the connection between site 5 and site 6, or completely disconnecting site 5 from the complex, leads to a dramatic enhancement of the entanglement between site 6 and site 7. Similarly, the transfer efficiency actually increases if site 5 is entirely disconnected from the complex. We further show that if sites 5 and 7 are conjointly removed, the efficiency falls. This suggests that while not contributing to the transport efficiency in a normal complex, site 5 may introduce a redundant transport route in case of damage to site 7. Our results suggest an overall robustness of the excitation-energy transfer in the FMO complex under mutations, local defects, and other abnormal situations.

We examine the fracture mechanics of tearing graphene. We present a molecular dynamics simulation of the propagation of cracks in clamped, free-standing graphene as a function of the out-of-plane force. The geometry is motivated by experimental configurations that expose graphene sheets to out-of-plane forces, such as back-gate voltage. We establish the geometry and basic energetics of failure and obtain approximate analytical expressions for critical crack lengths and forces. We also propose a method to obtain graphene's toughness. We observe that the cracks’ path and the edge structure produced are dependent on the initial crack length. This work may help avoid the tearing of graphene sheets and aid the production of samples with specific edge structures.

We consider here a classical model, consisting of $D_{2h}$-symmetric particles in a three-dimensional simple-cubic lattice; the pair potential is isotropic in orientation space, and restricted to nearest neighbors. The simplest potential model is written in terms of the squares of the scalar products between unit vectors describing the three interacting arms of the molecules, as proposed in previous literature. Two predominant antinematic couplings of equal strength ($+1$) are perturbed by a comparatively weaker calamitic one, parameterized by a coupling constant $-z$ ranging in $[-1,0]$. This choice rules out thermodynamically stable phases endowed with macroscopic biaxiality. The antinematic terms favor states with the corresponding molecular axes mutually orthogonal. Although the low-temperature phase of the special case with null calamitic term (PP0) is uniaxial and antinematically ordered, in the general case presented here both Monte Carlo and molecular-field approaches show that, for $z$ close to zero, the models exhibit a low-temperature uniaxial nematic phase, followed by an antinematic one, and finally by the orientationally disordered one. On the other hand, for sufficiently large values of $z$, we only find evidence of uniaxial calamitic behavior, as expected by following the limiting cases.

The emergence of fluid instabilities in the relevant limit of vanishing fluid inertia (i.e., arbitrarily close to zero Reynolds number) has been investigated for the well-known Kolmogorov flow. The finite-time shear-induced order-disorder transition of the non-Newtonian microstructure and the corresponding viscosity change from lower to higher values are the crucial ingredients for the instabilities to emerge. The finite-time low-to-high viscosity change for increasing shear characterizes the rheopectic fluids. The instability does not emerge in shear-thinning or -thickening fluids where viscosity adjustment to local shear occurs instantaneously. The lack of instabilities arbitrarily close to zero Reynolds number is also observed for thixotropic fluids, in spite of the fact that the viscosity adjustment time to shear is finite as in rheopectic fluids. Renormalized perturbative expansions (multiple-scale expansions), energy-based arguments (on the linearized equations of motion), and numerical results (of suitable eigenvalue problems from the linear stability analysis) are the main tools leading to our conclusions. Our findings may have important consequences in all situations where purely hydrodynamic fluid instabilities or mixing are inhibited due to negligible inertia, as in microfluidic applications. To trigger mixing in these situations, suitable (not necessarily viscoelastic) non-Newtonian fluid solutions appear as a valid answer. Our results open interesting questions and challenges in the field of smart (fluid) materials.

We derive some nonequilibrium identities such as the integral fluctuation theorem and the Jarzynski equality starting from a nonequilibrium state for dissipative classical systems. Thanks to the existence of the integral fluctuation theorem we can naturally introduce an entropy-like quantity for dissipative classical systems in far from equilibrium states. We also derive the generalized Green-Kubo formula as a nonlinear response theory for a steady dynamics around a nonequilibrium state. We numerically verify the validity of the derived formulas for sheared frictionless granular particles.

We study a model of interacting vortices in a type II superconductor. In the weak coupling limit, we constructed a mean-field theory which allows us to accurately calculate the vortex density distribution inside a confining potential. In the strong coupling limit, the correlations between the particles become important and the mean-field theory fails. Contrary to recent suggestions, this does not imply failure of the Boltzmann-Gibbs statistical mechanics, as we clearly demonstrate by comparing the results of molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations.

Consider a one-dimensional environment with $N$ randomly distributed sites. An agent explores this random medium moving deterministically with a spatial memory $\mu$. A crossover from local to global exploration occurs in one dimension at a well-defined memory value ${\mu }_1={\log }_{2}N$. In its stochastic version, the dynamics is ruled by the memory and by temperature $T$, which affects the hopping displacement. This dynamics also shows a crossover in one dimension, obtained computationally, between exploration schemes, characterized yet by the trajectory size ($N_p$) (aging effect). In this paper we provide an analytical approach considering the modified stochastic version where the parameter $T$ plays the role of a maximum hopping distance. This modification allows us to obtain a general analytical expression for the crossover, as a function of the parameters $\mu$, $T$, and $N_p$. Differently from what has been proposed by previous studies, we find that the crossover occurs in any dimension $d$. These results have been validated by numerical experiments and may be of great value for fixing optimal parameters in search algorithms.

Cell polarization (cued or uncued) is a fundamental mechanism in cell biology. As an alternative to the classical Turing bifurcation, it has been proposed that the onset of cell polarity might arise by means of the well-known phenomenon of wave-pinning [Gamba et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102, 16927 (2005)]. A particularly simple and elegant deterministic model of cell polarization based on the wave-pinning mechanism has been proposed by Edelstein-Keshet and coworkers [Biophys. J. 94, 3684 (2008)]. This model consists of a small biomolecular network where an active membrane-bound factor interconverts into its inactive form that freely diffuses in the cell cytosol. However, biomolecular networks do communicate with other networks as well as with the external world. Thus, their dynamics must be considered as perturbed by extrinsic noises. These noises may have both a spatial and a temporal correlation, and in any case they must be bounded to preserve the biological meaningfulness of the perturbed parameters. Here we numerically show that the inclusion of external spatiotemporal bounded parametric perturbations in the above wave-pinning-based model of cellular polarization may sometimes destroy the polarized state. The polarization loss depends on both the extent of temporal and spatial correlations and on the kind of noise employed. For example, an increase of the spatial correlation of the noise induces an increase of the probability of cell polarization. However, if the noise is spatially homogeneous then the polarization is lost in the majority of cases. These phenomena are independent of the type of noise. Conversely, an increase of the temporal autocorrelation of the noise induces an effect that depends on the model of noise.

We study the phase reduction of two coupled van der Pol oscillators with asymmetric repulsive coupling under an external harmonic force. We show that the system of two phase oscillators undergoes a Hopf bifurcation and possesses multistability on a $2\pi$-periodic phase plane. We describe the bifurcation mechanisms of formation of multistability in the phase-reduced system and show that the Andronov-Hopf bifurcation in the phase-reduced system is not an artifact of the reduction approach but, indeed, has its prototype in the nonreduced system. The bifurcational mechanisms presented in the paper enable one to describe synchronization effects in a wide class of interacting systems with repulsive coupling e.g., genetic oscillators.

Correlation matrices are a standard tool in the analysis of the time evolution of complex systems in general and financial markets in particular. Yet most analysis assume stationarity of the underlying time series. This tends to be an assumption of varying and often dubious validity. The validity of the assumption improves as shorter time series are used. If many time series are used, this implies an analysis of highly singular correlation matrices. We attack this problem by using the so-called power map, which was introduced to reduce noise. Its nonlinearity breaks the degeneracy of the zero eigenvalues and we analyze the sensitivity of the so-emerging spectra to correlations. This sensitivity will be demonstrated for uncorrelated and correlated Wishart ensembles.

Predicting the pattern formation in a system maintained far from equilibrium is a complex task. For a given dynamics governed by the evolution of a conservative order parameter, recent investigations have demonstrated that the knowledge of the long time expression of the order parameter is sufficient to predict the existence of disrupted coarsening, i.e., the pinning of the inhomogeneities wavelength to a well defined value. However, there exists some dynamics for which the asymptotic form of the order parameter remains unknown. The Cahn-Hilliard-like equation used to describe the stability of solids under irradiation belongs to this class of equations. In this paper, we present an alternative to predict the patterning induced by this equation. Based on a simple ansatz, we calculated the form factor and proved that a disrupted coarsening takes place in such dynamics. This disrupted coarsening results from the bifurcation of the implicit equation linking the characteristic length of the dynamics ${\left(k_m^{\infty }\right)}^{-1}$ to a control parameter describing the irradiation. This analysis is supported by direct simulations. From this paper, it clearly appears that the bifurcation of $k_m^{\infty }$ is a criterion for disrupted coarsening.

In this study we characterize the rheology of fluidized granular matter subject to secondary forcing. Our approach consists of first fluidizing granular matter in a drum half filled with grains via simple rotation and then superimposing oscillatory shear perpendicular to the downhill flow direction. The response of the system is mostly linear, with a phase lag between the grain motion and the oscillatory forcing. The rheology of the system can be well characterized by the GDR MiDi model if the system is forced with slow oscillations. The model breaks down when the forcing time scale becomes comparable to the characteristic time for energy dissipation in the flow.