Theory of electrical conductivities of ferrogels

Conductive organic polymers can be formulated with polymers that incorporate fine dispersed metallic particles. In this work, we present a general model for ferrogels which are chemically cross-linked polymer networks swollen with a ferrofluid. Our aim is to study the effect of the shape and/or material (conductivity) anisotropy on the effective electrical conductivity of the ferrogel in the presence of an external magnetic field. Our theory can reproduce the known results, and provides a link between the particle property and orientation distribution and the effective electrical conductivity. To this end, we find that material (conductivity) anisotropies are more important to yield a high effective electrical conductivity than shape anisotropies, while magnetic fields can offer a correction.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure

Dielectric behavior of oblate spheroidal particles: Application to erythrocytes suspensions

We have investigated the effect of particle shape on the eletrorotation (ER) spectrum of living cells suspensions. In particular, we consider coated oblate spheroidal particles and present a theoretical study of ER based on the spectral representation theory. Analytic expressions for the characteristic frequency as well as the dispersion strength can be obtained, thus simplifying the fitting of experimental data on oblate spheroidal cells that abound in the literature. From the theoretical analysis, we find that the cell shape, coating as well as material parameters can change the ER spectrum. We demonstrate good agreement between our theoretical predictions and experimental data on human erthrocytes suspensions.Comment: RevTex; 5 eps figure

Many-body dipole-induced dipole model for electrorheological fluids

Theoretical investigations on electrorheological (ER) fluids usually rely on computer simulations. An initial approach for these studies would be the point-dipole (PD) approximation, which is known to err considerably when the particles approach and finally touch due to many-body and multipolar interactions. Thus various work attempted to go beyond the PD model. Being beyond the PD model, previous attempts have been restricted to either local-field effects only or multipolar effects only, but not both. For instance, we recently proposed a dipole-induced-dipole (DID) model which is shown to be both more accurate than the PD model and easy to use. This work is necessary because the many-body (local-field) effect is included to put forth the many-body DID model. The results show that the multipolar interactions can indeed be dominant over the dipole interaction, while the local-field effect may yield an important correction.Comment: RevTeX, 3 eps figure

Assessment of closure coefficients for compressible-flow turbulence models

A critical assessment is made of the closure coefficients used for turbulence length scale in existing models of the transport equation, with reference to the extension of these models to compressible flow. It is shown that to satisfy the compressible 'law of the wall', the model coefficients must actually be functions of density gradients. The magnitude of the errors that result from neglecting this dependence on density varies with the variable used to specify the length scale. Among the models investigated, the k-omega model yields the best performance, although it is not completely free from errors associated with density terms. Models designed to reduce the density-gradient effect to an insignificant level are proposed

Magneto-controlled nonlinear optical materials

We exploit theoretically a magneto-controlled nonlinear optical material which contains ferromagnetic nanoparticles with a non-magnetic metallic nonlinear shell in a host fluid. Such an optical material can have anisotropic linear and nonlinear optical properties and a giant enhancement of nonlinearity, as well as an attractive figure of merit.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. To be published in Appl. Phys. Let

Engineering the accurate distortion of an object's temperature-distribution signature

It is up to now a challenge to control the conduction of heat. Here we develop a method to distort the temperature distribution signature of an object at will. As a result, the object accurately exhibits the same temperature distribution signature as another object that is predetermined, but actually does not exist in the system. Our finite element simulations confirm the desired effect for different objects with various geometries and compositions. The underlying mechanism lies in the effects of thermal metamaterials designed by using this method. Our work is of value for applications in thermal engineering.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure