Narayanan Menon
University of Massachusetts, MA·Physics
Particles settling through liquid and flexible objects landing on a liquid surface are everyday events. Examples include sediment in rivers, ice crystals falling in clouds, dead plankton sinking and carrying carbon into the deep ocean, and leaves or insects resting on water.
- Fields
Physics
Engineering
Materials Science
- Topics
soft matter
sedimentation
anisotropic particles
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Measure how single particles, pairs and concentrated suspensions settle across shapes of decreasing symmetry, from discs and rods to chiral and irregular shapes, using video imaging, x-ray CT and light scattering.
- Test how confinement and hard walls change settling rates and fluctuations in concentration, velocity and particle orientation in suspensions of anisotropic (non-spherical) particles.
- Model the settling of differently shaped particles with stokeslet-based numerical calculations, which represent each particle as point forces in slow viscous flow, to capture its shape symmetry.
- Study, through joint experiments and theory, how highly flexible elastic sheets and filaments attach to viscous fluid-fluid interfaces when fluid forces far exceed their bending stiffness.
More about the research
Most real objects are not spheres or rigid blocks. They are rods, flakes, sheets and filaments, yet theory and experiments have mostly treated simple shapes. This soft-matter physics research asks how shape and flexibility change the way objects move through liquids and attach to liquid surfaces.
Why it matters
Settling of non-spherical particles shapes chemical separations, ore cleaning, food and beverage processing, and natural processes such as ocean carbon capture by sinking phytoplankton and ice settling in clouds. Better models could improve predictions in these settings. Understanding how flexible sheets attach to liquid interfaces could lead to new ways to separate liquids, protect liquid cargo, or isolate toxic droplets without relying on molecular surfactants.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jonathan Rothstein
University of Massachusetts, MA·Engineering
Measure how self-propelled Marangoni surfers move on levitating spherical water drops in microgravity aboard the International Space Station, focusing on how the drop's overall curvature changes their propulsion.
Harishankar Manikantan
University of California-Davis, CA·Engineering·Early-career
Use asymptotic theory to calculate hydrodynamic interactions between pairs of particles in realistic non-Newtonian interfaces, including membranes and monolayers whose resistance to flow changes with deformation.
Xiaoyu Tang
Northeastern University, MA·Engineering·Early-career
Build an experimental platform that combines several advanced diagnostic methods to resolve flow, stress and particle concentration inside complex-fluid droplets as they hit surfaces, including opaque particle suspensions.
The school
University of Massachusetts: 28 labs on PI Pages, $282M a year on research, 337 research doctorates a year.
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