Context: Flow of non-brownian suspension is encountered in many fields such as soil science, cement and concrete technologies, proppants. For all these applications, the particles are suspended in a fluid that can be non-newtonian, and the flow occurs at different scales over a large range of velocities. In the dilute regime, the flow of suspension is well understood since the pioneering works of Einstein (1905). In contrast, flow of concentrated suspensions is still a topic of interest. In this regime, shocks between particles and short-range forces give rise to heterogeneous distribution of particles in the flow (Ovarlez et al. 2008), due to migration. Multiple studies have shown that jamming may arise when confinement becomes too high (Goyon et al. 2008, Chaudhuri et al. 2012). The goal of this project is to develop an experimental approach aiming at the characterization and optimization of the flow properties of suspensions in confined model geometries. The jamming of particles suspended in a viscoelastic fluid will be studied in order to evaluate to which extent jamming affects the suspension flow in a given medium. The effect of particle properties will also be investigated. Microfluidic devices will be set up, with various size and channel networks.

Background : PhD specialized in hydrodynamics of complex fluids, microfluidics, rheology.

Location : MMN group (Microfluidic, MEMS, Nanostructures) at IPGG

Contact : cecile.assailly@espci.fr ou elisabeth.bouchaud@espci.fr