Predictive Analysis of Complex Interfacial Flows (PACIF)

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Interfacial flows are encountered in a wide variety of natural phenomena and technological applications: from underwater, river and lava flows to biological settings such as tear films in the eye to conventional engineering applications such as condensers, heat exchangers and distillation units and more recent developments in the area of microreactors/MEMS and nanotechnology. The length scales involved range from the nanometer level as for dewetting of thin films, to the centimetre scale for heat and mass transfer applications, to the meter scale for geological flows. These processes and devices often depend critically on the behaviour of liquid films, especially in the presence of moving contact lines. The proposed research is a synergistic approach combining state-of-the-art theory, modelling, simulations and experimentation and involves a highly multi-disciplinary effort with a team that includes chemical/mechanical engineers, chemists, physicists and applied mathematicians. The proposed research calling upon the complementary expertise of this team aims to examine a number of open problems and research directions in the area of complex interfacial flows. For instance, a crucial problem in current predictive models for flows with moving contact lines is that artificial measures are required to alleviate the contact-line singularity. As a consequence, the necessary local mesh refinement to fully resolve the flow near contact lines render current models either unrealistic or excessively inefficient. The proposed research is therefore of paramount scientific and practical significance. It is a high-risk effort to provide the foundations and methodologies necessary for a detailed understanding of complex interfacial flows with moving contact lines and the development of tools for the accurate and efficient prediction of their dynamics that can be used in future research. The ultimate aim is the use of these tools for optimisation of processes and devices that exploit such flows.