Multiscale Analysis of Complex Interfacial Phenomena (MACIPh): Coarse graining, Molecular modelling, stochasticity, and experimentation

界面的出现，即不同物理性质的制度之间的材料或几何边界，不是先验规定的，出现在从流固力学和金融数学到材料科学和冰川学的大量固有非线性问题中。除了自由边界的存在外，界面的研究还遇到了其他几个具有挑战性的方面和复杂性，包括对三相接触线动力学的物理适当描述、具有复杂几何结构的衬底上的流体运动、依赖于浓度的物理性质、纳米颗粒的存在和相变。我们将这些称为复杂界面现象(CIPH)。建议的研究是一种结合最先进的建模、模拟和实验的协同方法，以仔细检查CIPH领域中的一些公开问题和研究方向。其目的是理性地理解和系统地预测它们的物理行为和特性。这反过来将允许逐步改进主要依赖CIPH的一系列技术和应用程序的性能和效率。理论-计算工作将得到详细的小规模实验的补充，这些实验将采取行动，以验证所开发的模型的有效性，并协助开发实际应用的工具包。这项工作将由伦敦帝国理工学院化学工程和数学系的一个团队承担，他们的技能和优势互补。

The occurrence of interfaces, i.e. material or geometric frontiers between regimes with different physical properties not a priori prescribed, arises in an enormous number of inherently nonlinear problems from fluid-solid mechanics and financial mathematics to materials science and glaciology. The study of interfaces encounters, in addition to the presence of a free boundary, several other challenging aspects and complexities, including a physically proper description of the dynamics of three-phase contact lines, fluid motion over substrates with complex geometry, concentration-dependent physical properties, the presence of nanoparticles and phase transitions. We refer to these as complex interfacial phenomena (CIPh).The proposed research is a synergistic approach combining state-of-the-art modelling, simulations and experimentation to scrutinise a number of open problems and research directions in the area of CIPh. The aim is to rationally understand and systematically predict their physical behaviour and properties. This in turn will allow for step improvements to the performance and efficiency of a host of technologies and applications that rely crucially on CIPh. The theoretical-computational work will be complemented by detailed small-scale experiments that will act so as to verify the efficacy of the developed models, as well as aiding the development of a toolkit for practical applications. The work will be undertaken by a team from the Chemical Engineering and Mathematics Departments at Imperial College London with complementary skills and strengths.