Fluid and Granular Mechanics

The soft matter engineering group pursues excellence in theoretical, computational and experimental expertise in synthesis, characterization and processing of soft matter. The group  focuses on providing smart, holistic, engineering solutions to challenging problems in soft matter which fall under the two key areas of national interest, namely Energy and Environment and Health and Hygiene. The research problems can be further classified under the following five broad areas of chemical engineering, namely, (i) Hydrodynamics, Rheology and Granular Flows, (ii) Nano-structured Materials, (iii) Micro-fluidics and Micro-devices, (iv) Colloids and Interface Engineering, and (v) Electro-hydrodynamics. The general approach in the Soft Matter Engineering group has been to provide innovative solutions with an emphasis on fundamentals. The diverse expertise available in the department to address problems at  microscopic, mesoscopic and continuum scales ensures a multi-scale understanding of any problem, a typical characteristic of soft matter. One of the major thrust areas of the soft matter engineering group is in synthesizing and developing new materials (biomaterials, composites, other soft materials) and uncovering the properties and applications of these materials, by investigating their structure and dynamics through experiments, theory and simulations. Specifically, under the broad area of Energy and Environment, the faculty of the soft matter research group focus on problems related to electro-emulsification, electro-spinning, electro-patterning, interplay of interfacial rheology and electric fields, tribology of soft  interfaces, dynamics of charging/discharging process in conducting polymers, physics of film formation and cracking of paints and coatings, atomization processes applied to combustion, microfluidics as a tool for generation of polymer based nanomaterials, dynamics of particle laden fluid flows, hydrodynamics of hydraulic jumps and cavitation, shear banding in amorphous solids, and development of molecular models to predict materials properties for catalysis and electronics applications. In the broad area of Health and Hygiene, the faculty are interested in problems related to development of aerogels for drug delivery from synthetic and natural materials, development of microfluidic devices for biological studies such as cell sorting and behavioral studies of microorganisms such as C. elegans, biophysics of bacterial locomotion, and physics of liposomes and elastic capsules. As the soft matter engineering group looks to the future, it aims to work on problems that are critical to the needs of the nation. These include design of hierarchically structured materials for carbon capture, energy storage, and water purification, suite of porous nanoparticle hosts for sensing, catalysis and drug delivery and mathematical models to address size and shape-controlled nanoparticle synthesis technologies for energy generation, harvesting and storage; and building lab-on chip technology for diagnostics and therapeutics and for sensing of trace molecules in air and water.