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Colloids, grains and dense suspensions: under flow and under arrest

09 - 10 March 2009 09:00 - 17:00

 

Organised by Professor Michael Cates FRS, Dr Paul Bartlett and Professor Wilson Poon.

Colloidal suspensions undergo Brownian diffusion that arrests at high density, remobilizing under flow. Slowly sheared non-Brownian particles (dry or in suspension) likewise show chaotic trajectories, but of quite different origin. Both systems can jam spontaneously when too large a stress is applied.

This meeting will compare and contrast the flow, jamming and arrest of Brownian and non-Brownian materials.

Download the programme (PDF) and poster abstracts (PDF). Due to unfortunate circumstances, Professor Sidney Nagel was unable to speak at this meeting. His session was taken by Professor Wim van Saarloos.

The proceedings of this meeting are scheduled to be published in a future issues of Philosophical Transactions A.

Organisers

  • Professor Mike Cates FRS, University of Edinburgh, UK

    Michael Cates has held the Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh since 1995 and since 2007 has held a Royal Society Research Professorship there. His research interests focus on the theory and modelling of complex fluids, particularly in relation to their flow properties. Recently he has been involved in extending the mode-coupling theory of colloidal glasses to address flow problems; prediction of novel arrested states involving particles at fluid interfaces; and studies of self-propelled colloidal entities such as bacteria. 

  • Dr Paul Bartlett, University of Bristol

    Paul Bartlett is a Reader in Chemistry at the University of Bristol. His research interests are centred on developing sophisticated optical and microscopy techniques to study the physical properties of concentrated colloidal systems. Recent highlights include the synthesis of complex binary crystals formed by oppositely-charged colloidal particles using confocal microscopy, the direct microscopic measurement of effective temperatures in colloidal glasses using optical tweezers, and the determination of the mechanism of dynamical arrest in colloidal gels. 

  • Professor Wilson Poon, University of Edinburgh, UK

    Wilson Poon has been professor of condensed matter physics at the University of Edinburgh since 1999. He is internationally known for his work using well-characterised model colloids to study fundamental questions in many-body physics, especially the glass transition and gelation, and to understand industrially relevant problems, especially the rheology of suspensions. An EPSRC Senior Research Fellowship and a subsequent ERC Advanced Grant is enabling him to become established in the physics of self-propelled colloids, including motile bacteria.