Lehigh Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series: Dr. Alban Sauret

From pipes to aquifers to medical devices, stopping the flow is always inconvenient and sometimes dangerous. Clogging can occur in confined flows of particulate suspension that carry either too many particles or particles that are too large or sticky. As a result, clogging is problematic in many engineering systems: printer nozzles, drip irrigation lines, autoinjection devices, pipes, ...

The challenge in studying the clogging of fluid systems by suspensions is that the underlying physics is complex and spans many length scales (from colloids to boulders) and time scales (from less than a second to years). In this talk, we will discuss how and why flowing stuff gets stuck. In particular, we will highlight the role of the different clogging mechanisms at play in various systems and our recent efforts to characterize, model, and prevent - or at least delay - the clogging of fluidic systems. We will also consider different potential methods to limit clogging in some applications. Predicting when clogging is likely to occur and working to prevent it can lead to new design principles to develop clog-resilient systems and improve the reliability of fluidic systems dispensing particulate suspensions.