arXiv subjects

Jan Guzowski

Publications and source records attributed to Jan Guzowski.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Short- and long-term avalanche dynamics in 1D-printed microfluidic crystals

We report arrays of monodisperse water-in-oil microdroplets printed onto a substrate in a form of a compact linear chain -- a 1D-crystal -- pinned at one end. The chain spontaneously collapses under capillary forces via a sequence of avalanche-like rearrangement waves, resembling the rearrangements in a flowing microfluidic crystal, yet limited by the hydrodynamic friction at the substrate. While the propagation of the subsequent waves, separated by highly ordered metastable states, is either accelerating or decelerating depending on the direction of collapse, the coarse-grained dynamics of multiple waves -- at moderate packing fractions $\phi$ -- is initially linear in time, before leveling off. We further demonstrate how the collapse can be prevented via the use of a roughened substrate. Our study provides insight into the short- and long-term avalanche dynamics in granular systems with free interfaces and opens way to precision-printing of microfluidic assays.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2023

Crystallization and topology-induced dynamical heterogeneities in soft granular clusters

Soft-granular media, such as dense emulsions, foams or tissues, exhibit either fluid- or solid-like properties depending on the applied external stresses. Whereas bulk rheology of such materials has been thoroughly investigated, the internal structural mechanics of finite soft-granular structures with free interfaces is still poorly understood. Here, we report the spontaneous `crystallization' and `melting' inside a model soft granular cluster -- a densely packed aggregate of $N\sim 30-40$ droplets engulfed by a fluid film -- subject to a varying external flow. We develop new machine learning tools to track the internal rearrangements in the quasi-2D cluster as it transits a sequence of constrictions. As the cluster relaxes from a state of strong mechanical deformations, we find differences in the dynamics of the grains within the interior of the cluster and those at its rim, with the latter experiencing larger deformations and less frequent rearrangements, effectively acting as an elastic membrane around a fluid-like core. We conclude that the observed structural-dynamical heterogeneity results from an interplay of the topological constrains, due to the presence of a closed interface, and the internal solid-fluid transitions. We discuss universality of such behavior in various types of finite soft granular structures, including biological tissues.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2022

DropTrack -- automatic droplet tracking using deep learning for microfluidic applications

Deep neural networks are rapidly emerging as data analysis tools, often outperforming the conventional techniques used in complex microfluidic systems. One fundamental analysis frequently desired in microfluidic experiments is counting and tracking the droplets. Specifically, droplet tracking in dense emulsions is challenging as droplets move in tightly packed configurations. Sometimes the individual droplets in these dense clusters are hard to resolve, even for a human observer. Here, two deep learning-based cutting-edge algorithms for object detection (YOLO) and object tracking (DeepSORT) are combined into a single image analysis tool, DropTrack, to track droplets in microfluidic experiments. DropTrack analyzes input videos, extracts droplets' trajectories, and infers other observables of interest, such as droplet numbers. Training an object detector network for droplet recognition with manually annotated images is a labor-intensive task and a persistent bottleneck. This work partly resolves this problem by training object detector networks (YOLOv5) with hybrid datasets containing real and synthetic images. We present an analysis of a double emulsion experiment as a case study to measure DropTrack's performance. For our test case, the YOLO networks trained with 60% synthetic images show similar performance in droplet counting as with the one trained using 100% real images, meanwhile saving the image annotation work by 60%. DropTrack's performance is measured in terms of mean average precision (mAP), mean square error in counting the droplets, and inference speed. The fastest configuration of DropTrack runs inference at about 30 frames per second, well within the standards for real-time image analysis.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2022

Stochastic jetting and dripping in confined soft granular flows

We report new dynamical modes in confined soft granular flows, such as stochastic jetting and dripping, with no counterpart in continuum viscous fluids. The new modes emerge as a result of the propagation of the chaotic behaviour of individual grains -- here, monodisperse emulsion droplets to the level of the entire system as the emulsion is focused into a narrow orifice by an external viscous flow. We observe avalanching dynamics and the formation of remarkably stable jets -- singlefile granular chains -- which occasionally break, resulting in a non-Gaussian distribution of cluster sizes. We find that the sequences of droplet rearrangements that lead to the formation of such chains resemble unfolding of cancer cell clusters in narrow capillaries, overall demonstrating that microfluidic emulsion systems could serve to model various aspects of soft granular flows, including also tissue dynamics at the meso-scale.

cond-mat.soft↗