Title: How (very) small things fall down (in fluids)

Abstract:

We will visit a few problems in the sedimentation of bodies through viscous fluids (Stokes flow) under gravity, ranging from individual body dynamics and boundary effects to fiber suspensions and the role of body deformability. This sightseeing tour will include chaotic dynamics, reduced-order modeling, stability analysis, multiple-scale asymptotics, boundary integral numerical techniques, and a coarse-grained mean-field theory.