BEE Fall 2026 Seminar Series - Dr. Alban Sauret Associate Professor and Clark Faculty Fellow, University of Maryland, College Park

Don’t Get Stuck: The Physics of Suspension Clogging

Abstract

From pipes to aquifers to medical devices, stopping the flow is always inconvenient and sometimes dangerous. Clogging can occur in confined flows of particulate suspensions when particles are too numerous, too large, or too sticky. It poses challenges in many engineering systems, including printer nozzles, drip irrigation lines, autoinjection devices, and pipes.

Understanding suspension clogging is difficult because the underlying physics spans many length scales, from colloids to boulders, and time scales, from less than a second to years. In this talk, we will discuss how and why flowing stuff gets stuck. We will examine the different clogging mechanisms at play in various systems and present our recent efforts to characterize, model, and prevent, or at least delay, the clogging of fluidic systems. We will also discuss practical approaches to limiting clogging in some applications. Understanding when and how clogs form can guide the design of more reliable systems for transporting and dispensing particulate suspensions.

Bio

Alban Sauret is an Associate Professor and Clark Faculty Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. After a BS, MS, and PhD in Physics obtained in France and a Postdoctoral Research position at Princeton University, he became a CNRS research scientist in France from 2014 to 2018. He then served on the faculty at UC Santa Barbara from 2018 to 2024 before joining Maryland in 2025. His research sits at the intersection of fluid mechanics, soft matter, interfacial dynamics, and granular physics, with applications ranging from manufacturing to water sustainability and geosciences. His honors include the NSF CAREER Award, the Milton van Dyke Award, a Soft Matter Pioneering Investigator Award. He also became a Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigator in 2025.