Mechanical and Civil Engineering Seminar

Mechanical and Civil Engineering Seminar Series

Title: Don't get stuck: (no)flow and clogging of particulate suspensions

Abstract: From pipes to aquifers to medical devices, stopping the flow is always inconvenient and sometimes dangerous. Clogging can occur in confined flows of particulate suspension that carry either too many particles or particles that are too large or sticky. As a result, clogging is problematic in many engineering systems. For instance, the blockage of inkjet printer nozzles, the progressive clogging of irrigation systems by colloidal particles, or the sudden blockage of autoinjection devices enabling patients to self-administer medicine impairs their performance. Similarly, the frequent formation of clogs in nozzles used to dispense fiber-filled polymer inks in extrusion-based additive manufacturing processes limits the concentration of fibers that can be used in three-dimensional printing.

The challenge in studying the clogging of fluid systems by suspensions is that the underlying physics is complex and spans many length scales (from bacteria to boulders) and time scales (from less than a second to years). In this talk, we will discuss how and why flowing stuff gets stuck. In particular, we will highlight the role of the different clogging mechanisms at play in various systems and our recent efforts to characterize, model, and prevent - or at least delay - the clogging of fluidic systems. We will also consider different potential methods to limit clogging in some applications. Predicting when clogging is likely to occur and working to prevent it can lead to new design principles to develop clog-resilient systems and improve the reliability of fluidic systems dispensing particulate suspensions.

Bio: Alban Sauret is currently a faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara and will join the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park in January 2025. After a BS, MS, and PhD in Physics obtained in France and a Postdoctoral Research position at Princeton University (USA), he joined the CNRS in France between 2014 and 2018 in a joint academic and industrial laboratory (Saint-Gobain). He then moved to UC Santa Barbara in 2018. His research lies at the intersection of fluid mechanics, soft matter, interfacial dynamics, and granular physics, aiming to understand the dynamics of multiphase systems for a broad range of applications from manufacturing to water sustainability or geosciences. He received various awards, such as a Soft Matter Emerging Investigator Award in 2017 and Pioneering Investigator Award in 2024 from the Royal Society of Chemistry, an NSF CAREER Award in 2020, an American Physical Society Milton van Dyke award in 2021, and an ASME Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering in 2024.

NOTE: At this time, in-person Mechanical and Civil Engineering Lectures are open to all Caltech students/staff/faculty/visitors.