Burghelea T., Bertola V. (Eds.) Transport Phenomena in Complex Fluids

Springer, 2020. — 402 p. — ISBN 978-3-030-35558-6.Complex fluids refer to a broad class of liquids and soft materials with complex microstructure, which is characterised by length and timescales spanning over very large ranges. Examples include polymer solutions and melts, particle suspensions, colloidal gels, foams and emulsions. Unlike simple liquids, such as water, complex fluids exhibit a strongly nonlinear response to external forcing, which can be described by constitutive models where the stress tensor is a nonlinear function of the deformation rate tensor. This has dramatic consequences on the dynamics of complex fluids, at both microscopic and macroscopic levels, and on their ability to transfer or exchange mass, momentum and energy.
This book provides a thorough overview of transport phenomena in complex fluids, based on the latest research results and the newest methods for their analytical prediction and numerical simulation. The respective chapters cover several topics, including: a description of the structural features of the most common complex fluids (polymer and surfactant solutions, colloidal suspensions); an introduction to the most common non-Newtonian constitutive models and their relationship with the fluid microstructure; a detailed overview of the experimental methods used to characterise the thermophysical properties, bulk rheology, and surface properties of complex fluids; a comprehensive introduction to heat, mass, and momentum transport, and to hydrodynamic instabilities in complex fluids; and an introduction to state-of-the-art numerical methods used to simulate complex fluid flows, with a focus on the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) and the Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) techniques. Subsequent chapters provide in-depth descriptions of phenomena such as thermal convection, elastic turbulence, mixing of complex fluids, thermophoresis, sedimentation, and non-Newtonian drops and sprays.
The book addresses research scientists and professionals, engineers, R&D managers and graduate students in the fields of engineering, chemistry, biology, medicine, and the applied and fundamental sciences, and can be used as support textbook in graduate and postgraduate courses in complex fluids or non-Newtonian fluid dynamics.