In collaboration with Wendy Zhang’s group we investigated experimentally and numerically the evolution of dense suspension drops that collide against a smooth solid surface and flatten into a rapidly expanding monolayer. This creates a lace-like pattern of particle clusters separated by particle-free regions. Both the expansion dynamics and the development of the spatial inhomogeneity are captured quantitatively by simple models derived from balancing forces acting on individual particles.

1. •Luuk A. Lubbers, Qin Xu, Sam Wilken, Wendy W. Zhang, and Heinrich M. Jaeger, “Dense Suspension Splat: Monolayer Spreading and Hole Formation after Impact”,   preprint