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The Wall Chose Where the Filament Broke
In microfluidic coflows, confinement created a shear maximum that seeded the first bead-on-a-string instability.
Summary
In microfluidic coflows, confinement created a shear maximum that seeded the first bead-on-a-string instability.
Experiments with a shear-thinning viscoelastic liquid in a rectangular microchannel mapped stable coflow, squeezing, dripping and jetting regimes. Elasticity delayed capillary breakup, while wall-induced nonuniform shear along an inclined filament selected where the first bead-on-a-string instability appeared. Scaling arguments predicted key sizes and lengths to the correct order, giving a coupled wall-shear-elasticity picture rather than classical thinning alone.
Why it matters
In microfluidic coflows, confinement created a shear maximum that seeded the first bead-on-a-string instability.
Limits and context
No additional limitation was separately recorded.
Key claims
In microfluidic coflows, confinement created a shear maximum that seeded the first bead-on-a-string instability.
Evidence: source-2026-08-09-009
Sources
- arXiv preprint 2608.05343arXiv · primary research
Corrections
No corrections have been recorded for this story.