Projects
Structural and Rheological Characterization of Injectable Hydrogels for Minimally Invasive Adipose Tissue Engineering KU Leuven
Every day, women around the world are diagnosed with breast cancer. In order to completely remove the cancerous tissue, women often have to undergo total breast amputation. This results in significant physical and psychological damage. Breast reconstruction is a valid option to recover from these negative consequences. However, the current state of the art breast reconstruction methods, summarized as implant-based, autologous tissue ...
Rheological and Microstructural Investigation of Capillary Suspensions under Shear KU Leuven
The addition of small amounts of an immiscible secondary fluid to a suspension can lead to particle bridging and network formation. This is caused by the attractive capillary force due to liquid bridges formed between the particles. Thus, this kind of suspensions is called a ``capillary suspension''. The capillary bridging phenomenon can be used to stabilize particle suspensions and precisely tune their rheological properties. Capillary ...
A High Frequency Rheometrical Study on Colloidal Suspensions KU Leuven
Colloidal suspensions are present in a wide range of natural and synthetic applications. Their colloidal nature leads to a complex interplay between different interaction forces and defines their structure. In order to understand and manipulate the behaviour of a suspension, knowledge on the relationship between structure and properties is hence crucial. Rheology is particularly useful for deriving such relationships and allows to investigate ...
On-demand Interfacial Coverage and Composition using Double Emulsion Templating KU Leuven
Emulsions are dispersions of an immiscible liquid into another liquid. We encounter them on daily basis, such as in food and personal care products. However, emulsions are thermodynamically unstable due to the high cost of the interface between the droplets and matrix fluid. For this reason, emulsions tend to coarsen over time by morphological processes such as coalescence and Ostwald ripening to reduce their interfacial energy. Therefore, ...
Investigation of lubricating fluids with combined rheological and rheo-optical techniques KU Leuven
This PhD aims at understanding the role of polymeric additives in lubricants on the rheological behaviour and lubricating properties. While the rheological properties of lubricants can and have been accessed in the past with standard rheological investigation tools, it is in particular the high shear behaviour that is relevant for most applications that is, however, often outside the deformation rate range that can be applied with commercial ...
COntrolling eNhanCed soft matter mIcrOstrUctureS via the fundamental understanding of formation time-scale competition (CONCIOUS) KU Leuven
Capillary nanosuspensions for fabrication of smart porous materials KU Leuven
Creating strong physical gels in a controlled way with network structure having varying degree of strength from the same components and concentration is useful in many applications such as in the structuring of foods or cosmetic formulations, or as a precursor for porous materials, membranes, and printed electronics. The nature of gel in terms of its structure and strength is a strong function of processing conditions. The gel state when ...
The impact of raw material and processing parameters on the properties of mashed potato streams. KU Leuven
Potato-based mashes serve as a basis for a large range of (pre-)fried (frozen) potato products such as potato croquettes. Transformations in potato constituents during their making probably determine product quality. However, fundamental knowledge on the impact of raw material properties and particularly those of starch, the potato main constituent besides water, on mash making is lacking. This doctoral research aims at (i) unraveling the ...
The Rheological and Shrinkage Behaviour of Fe-rich Slag-based Binders KU Leuven
The global anthropogenic CO2 emission, which is considered the main contributor to global warming, is exponentially increasing yearly. The proportion of CO2 emission from construction is around 8-9% and is expected to become more significant in future, as the demand for raw materials in construction, such as ordinary Portland cement (OPC), increases every year. The production of OPC is environmentally unfriendly and the availability of ...