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Freezing Soft Matter
In this seminar I will discuss two examples where we experimentally studied the freezing behavior of soft materials.
Our first object of interest will be an hydrogel. We will explore the effect of the presence of a polymer network in the dynamics of the freezing front. We’ll also try to see whether the stress increase due to the volume expansion can interfere with the polymer network.
In a second part, I will present recent results we obtained on the freezing of an aqueous foam. The complex geometry of the foam leads to a slow down of the freezing front. The presence of the phase change drives strong flows in the foam, leading to drastic changes in the shape of the foam itself.