Using symmetry to control viscoelastic waves in pillar arrays.

ABSTRACT: Solutions of macromolecules exhibit viscoelastic properties and unlike Newtonian fluids, they may break time-reversal symmetry at low Reynolds numbers resulting in elastic turbulence. Furthermore, under some conditions, instead of the chaotic turbulence, the result is large-scale waves in the form of cyclic spatial and temporal concentration variations, as has been shown for macromolecular DNA flowing in microfluidic pillar arrays. We here demonstrate how altering the symmetry of the individual pillars can be used to influence the symmetry of these waves. We control the extent of instabilities in viscoelastic flow by leveraging the effects of the symmetry of the pillars on the waves, demonstrating suppressed viscoelastic fluctuations with relevance for transport and sorting applications, o

SUBMITTER: Beech JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10603618 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature