Nanoscale building blocks of many materials exhibit extraordinary mechanical properties due to their defect-free molecular structure. Translation of these high mechanical properties to macroscopic materials represents a difficult materials engineering challenge due to the necessity to organize these building blocks into multiscale patterns and mitigate defects emerging at larger scales. Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs), the most abundant structural element in living systems, has impressively high strength and stiffness, but natural or artificial cellulose composites are 3-15 times weaker than the CNFs. Here, we report the flow-assisted organization of CNFs into macroscale fibers with nearly perfect unidirectional alignment. Efficient stress transfer from macroscale to individual CNF due to cross-linking and high degree of order enables their Young's modulus to reach up to 86 GPa and a tensile strength of 1.57 GPa, exceeding the mechanical properties of known natural or synthetic biopolymeric materials. The specific strength of our CNF fibers engineered at multiscale also exceeds that of metals, alloys, and glass fibers, enhancing the potential of sustainable lightweight high-performance materials with multiscale self-organization.

-One of the pivotal questions in the dynamics of the oceans is related to the cascade of mechanical energy in the abyss and its contribution to mixing. Here, we propose internal wave attractors in the large amplitude regime as a unique self-consistent experimental and numerical setup that models a cascade of triadic interactions transferring energy from large-scale monochromatic input to multi-scale internal wave motion. We also provide signatures of a discrete wave turbulence framework for internal waves. Finally, we show how beyond this regime, we have a clear transition to a regime of small-scale high-vorticity events which induce mixing.Introduction. -The continuous energy input to the ocean interior comes from the interaction of global tides with the bottom topography [1]. The subsequent mechanical energy cascade to small-scale internal-wave motion and mixing is a subject of active debate [2] in view of the important role played by abyssal mixing in existing models of ocean dynamics [3][4][5]. A question remains: how does energy injected through internal waves at large vertical scales [6] induce the mixing of the fluid [2]?In a stratified fluid with an initially constant buoyancy frequency N = [(−g/ρ)(dρ/dz)] 1/2 , where ρ(z) is the density distribution (ρ a reference value) over vertical coordinate z, and g the gravity acceleration, the dispersion relation of internal waves is θ = ± arcsin(Ω). The angle θ is the slope of the wave beam to the horizontal, and Ω the frequency of oscillations non-dimensionalized by N . The dispersion relation requires preservation of the slope of the internal wave beam upon reflection at a rigid boundary. In the case of a sloping boundary, this property gives a purely geometric reason for a strong variation of the width of internal wave beams (focusing or defocusing) upon reflection. Internal wave focusing provides a necessary condition for large shear and overturning, as well as shear and bottom layer instabilities at slopes [7][8][9][10].In a confined fluid domain, focusing usually prevails, leading to a concentration of wave energy on a closed loop, the internal wave attractor [11]. Attractors eventually

In the present paper, we combine numerical and experimental approaches to study the dynamics of stable and unstable internal wave attractors. The problem is considered in a classic trapezoidal set-up filled with a uniformly stratified fluid. Energy is injected into the system at global scale by the small-amplitude motion of a vertical wall. Wave motion in the test tank is measured with the help of conventional synthetic schlieren and particle image velocimetry techniques. The numerical set-up closely reproduces the experimental one in terms of geometry and the operational range of the Reynolds and Schmidt numbers. The spectral element method is used as a numerical tool to simulate the nonlinear dynamics of a viscous salt-stratified fluid. We show that the results of 3D calculations are in excellent qualitative and quantitative agreement with the experimental data, including the spatial and temporal parameters of the secondary waves produced by triadic resonance instability. Further, we explore experimentally and numerically the effect of lateral walls on secondary currents and spanwise distribution of velocity amplitudes in the wave beams. Finally, we test the assumption of a bidimensional flow and estimate the error made in synthetic schlieren measurements due to this assumption.

Successful assembly of suspended nanoscale rod-like particles depends on fundamental phenomena controlling rotational and translational diffusion. Despite the significant developments in fluidic fabrication of nanostructured materials, the ability to quantify the dynamics in processing systems remains challenging. Here we demonstrate an experimental method for characterization of the orientation dynamics of nanorod suspensions in assembly flows using orientation relaxation. This relaxation, measured by birefringence and obtained after rapidly stopping the flow, is deconvoluted with an inverse Laplace transform to extract a length distribution of aligned nanorods. The methodology is illustrated using nanocelluloses as model systems, where the coupling of rotational diffusion coefficients to particle size distributions as well as flow-induced orientation mechanisms are elucidated.

[1] Prediction of glacier and polar ice sheet dynamics is a major challenge, especially in view of changing climate. The flow behavior of an ice mass is fundamentally linked to processes at the grain and subgrain scale. However, our understanding of ice rheology and microstructure evolution based on conventional deformation experiments, where samples are analyzed before and after deformation, remains incomplete. To close this gap, we combine deformation experiments with in situ neutron diffraction textural and grain analysis that allows continuous monitoring of the evolution of rheology, texture, and microstructure. We prepared ice samples from deuterium water, as hydrogen in water ice has a high incoherent neutron scattering rendering it unsuitable for neutron diffraction analysis. We report experimental results from deformation of initially randomly oriented polycrystalline ice at three different constant strain rates. Results show a dynamic system where steady-state rheology is not necessarily coupled to microstructural and textural stability. Textures change from a weak single central c axis maxima to a strong girdle distribution at 35 to the compression axis attributed to dominance of basal slip followed by basal combined with pyramidal slip. Dislocation-related hardening accompanies this switch and is followed by weakening due to new grain nucleation and grain boundary migration. With decreasing strain rate, grain boundary migration becomes increasingly dominant and texture more pronounced. Our observations highlight the link between the dynamics of processes competition and rheological and textural behavior. This link needs to be taken into account to improve ice mass deformation modeling critical for climate change predictions.

We describe, for the first time, an experiment devoted to the study of the spatial conformation of a flexible fiber in a turbulent flow. We propose a model for the transition from rigid to flexible regimes as the intensity of turbulence is increased or the elastic energy of the fiber is decreased. This transition occurs for a fiber typical length which is observed experimentally and recovered by our analysis. We also demonstrate that the conformations of flexible fibers in a turbulent flow are analog to conformations of flexible polymers in a good solvent. This last result opens some new and creative ways to model flexible fiber distortions in turbulent flows while addressing fundamental problems in polymer dynamics.

This paper presents an experimental study of different instability scenarios in a parallelogram-shaped internal wave attractor in a trapezoidal domain filled with a uniformly stratified fluid. Energy is injected into the system via the oscillatory motion of a vertical wall of the trapezoidal domain. Whole-field velocity measurements are performed with the conventional PIV technique.In the linear regime, the total kinetic energy of the fluid system is used to quantify the strength of attractors as a function of coordinates in the parameter space defining their zone of existence, the so-called Arnold tongue. In the nonlinear regime, the choice of the operational point in the Arnold tongue is shown to have a significant impact on the scenario of the onset of triadic instability, most notably on the influence of confinement on secondary waves. The onset of triadic resonance instability may occur as a spatially localized event similar to Scolan, Ermanyuk & Dauxois (2013) in the case of strong focusing or in form of growing normal modes as in McEwan (1971) for the limiting case of rectangular domain. In the present paper, we describe also a new intermediate scenario for the case of weak focusing.We explore the long-term behaviour of cascades of triadic instabilities in wave attractors and show a persistent trend toward formation of standing-wave patterns corresponding to some discrete peaks of the frequency spectrum. At sufficiently high level of energy injection the system exhibits a "mixing box" regime which has certain qualitatively universal properties regardless to the choice of the operating point in the Arnold tongue. In particular, for this regime, we observe a statistics of events with high horizontal vorticity, which serve as kinematic indicators of mixing.

The reflection of internal gravity waves at sloping boundaries leads to focusing or defocusing. In closed domains, focusing typically dominates and projects the wave energy onto 'wave attractors'. For small-amplitude internal waves, the projection of energy onto higher wave numbers by geometric focusing can be balanced by viscous dissipation at high wave numbers. Contrary to what was previously suggested, viscous dissipation in interior shear layers may not be sufficient to explain the experiments on wave attractors in the classical quasi-2D trapezoidal laboratory set-ups. Applying standard boundary layer theory, we provide an elaborate description of the viscous dissipation in the interior shear layer, as well as at the rigid boundaries. Our analysis shows that even if the thin lateral Stokes boundary layers consist of no more than 1% of the wall-to-wall distance, dissipation by lateral walls dominates at intermediate wave numbers. Our extended model for the spectrum of 3D wave attractors in equilibrium closes the gap between observations and theory by Hazewinkel et al. (2008). † Email address for correspondence: f.beckebanze@uu.nl arXiv:1707.08009v1 [physics.flu-dyn]