Drifting/Diffusive Regime Transition of Deformable Particles in a Honeycomb Network

Zaiyi Shen (1) , Franck Plouraboué (2) , Juho S Lintuvuori (2) , Hengdi Zhang , Mehdi Abbasi (3) , Chaouqi Misbah (3)

1 LOMA - Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d'Aquitaine
2 IMFT - Institut de mécanique des fluides de Toulouse
3 LIPhy - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Physique [Saint Martin d’Hères]

Transport of deformable particles in a honeycomb network is studied numerically. It is shown that the particle deformability has a strong impact on their distribution in the network. For sufficiently soft particles, we observe a short memory behavior from one bifurcation to the next, and the overall behavior consists in a random partition of particles, exhibiting a diffusion-like transport. On the contrary, stiff enough particles undergo a biased distribution whereby they follow a deterministic partition at bifurcations, leading to a lateral drift in the network. An increase of concentration enhances particle-particle interactions which shorten the memory effect, turning the particle lateral drift into an effective diffusion. We expect the drifting/diffusive regime transition to be generic for deformable particles.

Mots clés: Fluid Dynamics; Physics of Living Systems; Polymers & Soft Matter

Domaines: Mécanique [physics]

Zaiyi Shen, Franck Plouraboué, Juho S Lintuvuori, Hengdi Zhang, Mehdi Abbasi, et al.. Drifting/Diffusive Regime Transition of Deformable Particles in a Honeycomb Network. Physical Review Letters, 2023, 130 (1), pp.014001. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.014001⟩. ⟨hal-03872584⟩