Wrinkling of microcapsules in shear flow

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the wrinkling instability of elastic microcapsules in shear flow, deriving analytical expressions for the critical shear rate and wavelength, which can help infer elastic properties from experiments.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical framework for predicting capsule wrinkling thresholds and wavelengths based on elastic parameters and flow conditions.

Findings

Derived analytical expressions for wrinkling threshold shear rate

Calculated critical wrinkling wavelength

Provided a method to infer elastic parameters from experiments

Abstract

Elastic capsules can exhibit short wavelength wrinkling in external shear flow. We analyse this instability of the capsule shape and use the length scale separation between the capsule radius and the wrinkling wavelength to derive analytical results both for the threshold value of the shear rate and for the critical wave-length of the wrinkling. These results can be used to deduce elastic parameters from experiments.