Dense Suspensions in Viscoelastic Media

计划研究粘弹性介质中稠密悬浮液的流变学；利用计算方法发展理论理解。截至2020年，悬浮体的计算研究主要集中在牛顿悬浮介质上，处理非牛顿(粘弹性)情况的工作有限。关于拟议的专题有大量的实验研究；不幸的是，由于缺乏理论工作，导致对实验结果的巩固有限。虽然牛顿的情况更简单，也更容易理解，但粘弹性情况更能代表悬浮液的工业、工程和医疗用途。例如，用于制造减震复合材料的膏体挤压工艺或用于食品和医疗保健的致密膏体(例如牙膏)。对VE悬浮流变学的定量了解的改进可用于突出用于生产所述悬浮的反应器和混合器中的停滞区域，从而使工程师能够研究解决方案。我研究的首要目标将是构建本构方程来描述在稠密区域的模拟行为，在稠密区域，悬浮颗粒的固体体积分数大于30%。这些本构方程可以被工程从业者用来提供对真实流动的定量预测，从而有助于工艺设计的进步。研究领域：“连续介质力学”和“流体动力学和空气动力学”。

Plan to research the rheology of dense suspensions in viscoelastic media; utilising computational methods to develop theoretical understanding. As of 2020, computational research into suspensions has focused mostly on Newtonian suspending media, with a limited number of works addressing the non-Newtonian (viscoelastic) case. There is a wealth of experimental research on the proposed topic; unfortunately, the lack of theoretical work has resulted in limited consolidation of experimental findings. Though the Newtonian case is simpler and better understood, the viscoelastic case is more representative of industrial, engineering and medical uses for suspensions. For example,paste extrusion processes such as those used to create shock absorbing composites or dense pastes used in foodstuffs and healthcare (e.g. toothpastes). Improvement to the quantitative understanding of VE suspension rheology could be used to highlight stagnation regions in reactors and mixers used to produce said suspensions, allowing engineers to investigate solutions. The overarching goal of my research will be to construct constitutive equations to describe the simulated behaviour in the dense regime, where the solid volume fraction of suspended particles is greater than 30%. These constitutive equations can then be used by engineering practitioners to provide quantitative predictions of real flows; thus assisting the advancement of process design.Research Areas: "continuum mechanics" and "fluid dynamics and aerodynamics".