Speaker
Francois Graner
(Univ. Denis Diderot - Paris 7)
Description
Liquid foams are made of gas bubbles surrounded by water.
They are model systems to understand the physics of complex
cellular materials (made of cells tiling the space), which
behave simultaneously as solids and liquids. We have
established statistical tools to link the discrete
description of each bubble shape (and shape evolution) with
a continuous description which encompasses the shape
information useful at the global level. This enabled us to
suggest and validate a mechanical model able to predict
efficiently, despite two strong non-linearities, how a foam
flows in general geometries. Such multi-scale descriptive
approach applies to a large class of disordered systems,
including aggregates of living cells or developing tissues
in the fruit fly.
