Nanoemulsions are metastable dispersions of nanodroplets of one liquid that have been ruptured by shear in another immiscible liquid. The ruptured droplets are stabilized against subsequent coalescence by a surfactant. Because the nanodroplets do not form spontaneously, as they can in lyotropic “microemulsion” phases, the structure of nanoemulsions is primarily dependent on the history of the a...

We investigated the effects of particle shape on shear thickening in densely packed suspensions. Rods of different aspect ratios and nonconvex hooked rods were fabricated. Viscosity curves and normal stresses were measured using a rheometer for a wide range of packing fractions for each shape. Suspensions of each shape exhibit qualitatively similar discontinuous shear thickening. The logarithmi...

Mechanical integrity of the interfacial region between ceramic coatings and substrates is critical to high performance coated mechanical components and manufacturing tools. Mechanical failure of the coating/substrate interfacial region often leads to catastrophic failure of the coated system as a whole. Despite extensive research over the past two decades, quantitative assessment of the mechani...

We formulate a theoretical model of the shear failure of a thin film tethered to a rigid substrate. The interface between film and substrate is modeled as a cohesive layer with randomly fluctuating shear strength/fracture energy. We demonstrate that, on scales large compared with the film thickness, the internal shear stresses acting on the interface can be approximated by a second-order gradie...

Several stress analysis methods were used to find the energy release rate for initiation of an interfacial crack in a microbond specimen. First, we used a recently derived variational mechanics analysis of the stresses in a microbond specimen. Previous studies for analysis of crack growth have used shear-lag methods. For a second analysis, we present a new, and more complete, shear-lag analysis...

We investigate the influences of expansion-contraction microchannels on droplet breakup in capillary microfluidic devices. With variations in channel dimension, local shear stresses at the injection nozzle and focusing orifice vary, significantly impacting flow behavior including droplet breakup locations and breakup modes. We observe transition of droplet breakup location from focusing orifice...

Instabilities in a two-phase electromagnetohydrodynamic (EMHD) flow between a pair of parallel electrodes are explored. A linear stability analysis has been performed based on a coupled Orr-Sommerfeld system generated from the conservation laws. The study shows the presence of a finite-wave-number EMHD mode of instability in addition to the two commonly observed instability modes in the pressur...