Abstract

Suspensions of particles in fluids show complex spatial and temporal behaviour in response to forces and other external conditions. Examples abound in nature (earthquakes, mudslides, avalanches, volcanoes, sediments…), in industry (packed bed chemical reactors, fracking fluids, slurries, foods, pharmaceutical manufacture, oil and gas extraction…), and in basic science (granulars, blood flow, traffic, colloids, bacteria…). The underlying question across all of these widely varying applications is how interactions between particles, fluid and environment result in process, behaviour and properties of materials. I will illustrate through some recent work on a range of systems and situations, including jamming in highly concentrated colloids, engineering enzyme-based ‘particle vehicles’ for nanotransport, and the behaviour of swimming algae in oscillating flows.