Capillary Flows of Suspensions

Capillary flows of particulate suspensions occur in a broad range of manufacturing, environmental, and bioengineering processes. However, the classical interfacial dynamics is strongly modified when the length scale of the capillary object becomes comparable to the particle size, leading to a failure of classical models based on a macroscopic rheological approach. For instance, particles can destabilize thin films or lead to defects in additive manufacturing. In this talk, I will describe how particles can modify the formation of droplets and thin films of suspension. I will discuss how these results can be used to develop passive capillary filtering and sorting mechanisms. Our approach, bridging different length and time scales, describes how the bulk behavior and local heterogeneities contribute to the interfacial dynamics of particulate suspensions.