Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering | University of California San Diego
Microscale Flow Modeling
Saintillan Research Group
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    • Biophysical Fluid Dynamics
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Welcome to the Saintillan Research Group!

Our research centers on the study of fundamental fluid mechanics problems involving complex fluids and complex flows, typically on small scales. We use a combination of modeling, theory, and numerical simulations to study the dynamics and properties of flows involving a microstructure (such as particles, macromolecules, swimming micro-organisms, biopolymers) suspended in and interacting with a viscous fluid, as arise in many biophysical, environmental, and technological processes. We are particularly interested in fluid flow problems in which complexity arises from: multiphysics phenomena in which the interactions of various effects (mechanical, electric, chemical, or thermal) lead to complex dynamics; the effects of long-ranged hydrodynamic interactions on fluctuations and pattern formation; the coupling of a large number of degrees of freedom (such as particle configurations). Many of our current problems of interest are motivated by simple experiments, biological phenomena, or engineering applications, and their solution often involves applied mathematics, large-scale computation, and comparisons to experimental data. More details on our recent work can be found on our research page and in our publications.


Group Photo Left to right: Piyush Prakash, Achal Mahajan, Debasish Das, David Saintillan, Roberto Alonso-Matilla, Brato Chakrabarti, Yixuan Jia, Maxime Theillard.

Recent News

November 2018: The Saintillan Research Group attended the 71st Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics in Atlanta, GA.

October 2018: The paper "Extensile motor activity drives coherent motions in a model of interphase chromatin" by Saintillan, Shelley and Zidovska appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Click here to download the article.

September 2018: Prof. Saintillan was elected 2018 Fellow of the American Physical Society. The citation reads: "For incisive analysis of suspension dynamics involving complex and active particles and including electrokinetic effects".

September 2018: The paper "Morphological transitions of elastic filaments in shear flow" by Liu, Chakrabarti, Saintillan, Lindner and du Roure appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Click here to download the article.

Gallery of Images

Biophysical Fluid Dynamics

  • Dynamics of biologically active suspensions
  • Chemotaxis in bacterial suspensions
  • Dynamics of semiflexible biological polymers
  • Rheology of active fluids

Electrokinetics and Microfluidics

  • Electrokinetics of colloidal suspensions
  • Interactions in Quincke electrorotation
  • Optimization of mixing by chaotic advection
  • Dynamics of autonomous catalytic nanomotors

Complex Particulate Flows

  • Concentration instabilities in sedimentation
  • Gravity-driven particulate jets
  • Weak inertial effects in particulate flows
  • Efficient algorithms for Stokes suspensions
Copyright © 2012 David Saintillan
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