Predictive Analysis of Complex Interfacial Flows (PACIF)

界面流动在各种自然现象和技术应用中都会遇到：从水下、河流和熔岩流动到生物环境，如眼睛中的泪膜，再到常规工程应用，如冷凝器、热交换器和蒸馏装置，以及微反应器/MEMS和纳米技术领域的最新发展。所涉及的长度尺度从用于薄膜去湿的纳米尺度，到用于热和传质应用的厘米尺度，到用于地质流动的米尺度。这些工艺和设备通常严重依赖于液膜的性能，特别是在存在移动接触线的情况下。拟议的研究是一种结合最先进的理论、建模、模拟和实验的协同方法，涉及一个包括化学/机械工程师、化学家、物理学家和应用数学家在内的团队，涉及高度多学科的努力。这项拟议的研究需要该团队的互补专业知识，旨在研究复杂界面流动领域的一些公开问题和研究方向。例如，当前对具有移动接触线的流动的预测模型中的一个关键问题是需要人工措施来缓解接触线的奇异性。因此，为完全解决接触线附近的流动而进行的必要的局部网格细化会使当前的模型不现实或过于低效。因此，拟议的研究具有极其重要的科学意义和现实意义。这是一项高风险的努力，目的是提供必要的基础和方法，详细了解具有移动接触线的复杂界面流动，并开发工具，准确有效地预测其动态，以便在未来的研究中使用。最终目的是使用这些工具来优化利用这种流动的流程和设备。

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.