Modelling the Complex Dynamics of Particles at Interfaces

许多化学和冶金过程涉及与颗粒/粒状形式的固体材料相互作用的流体。在某些情况下，颗粒意味着存在;例如，食品和药品工业利用各种工艺来涂覆颗粒，如药丸和糖果;另一个例子是将固体颗粒添加到熔融聚合物中，以改善最终塑料部件的性能。另一方面，还有其他工业过程，其目标是分离混合在一起的流体和颗粒;加拿大的明显例子是油砂加工，将沙子从石油中分离出来。所有这些过程都涉及多种流体（有时是多种液体，有时是液体和气体）与固体材料的相互作用。无论我们是试图提高涂层工艺的质量，还是提高分离工艺的效率，了解这些多种流体和固体颗粒如何相互作用都是有帮助的。这个提案是为了资助一个工程研究生团队开发一个复杂的计算机程序，预测一些基本的流体/固体现象，然后使用该程序运行模拟，教我们这些流体和固体如何相互作用。然后，我们可以使用新发现的知识来检查涂层和分离（以及其他）过程，并考虑如何根据我们所学到的知识改进它们。这项研究将在许多方面产生影响：（1）编写软件将要求我们开发新的算法来模拟粒子和流体之间的一些复杂相互作用，我们将与其他从事类似项目的人分享这些算法;（2）模拟将贡献一些基本流体/粒子现象的新的基础知识，单个粒子如何在两种流体之间的界面处作用，以及粒子团如何聚集或分裂;以及（3）该研究计划将培养一批非常有才华的研究工程师，培养这些年轻人在建模和分析方面的技能，然后这些年轻人将带着他们进入工业界和学术界的研究领导职位。

Many chemical and metallurgical processes involve fluids that interact with solid material in particle/granular form. In some cases the particles are meant to be there; for example, the food and drug industries utilize a variety of processes to coat particles such as pills and candy; another example is the addition of solid particles to a molten polymer, to improve the properties of a final plastic part. On the other hand, there are other industrial processes where the goal is to separate the fluids and particles that are mixed together; the obvious Canadian example is the processing of oil sands, to get the sand out of the oil. All of these processes involve the interaction of multiple fluids (sometimes multiple liquids, sometimes liquids and gases) with solid material. Whether we're trying to improve the quality of a coating process, or improve the efficacy of a separation process, it helps to understand how these multiple fluids and solid particles interact. This proposal is for funds to support a team of engineering graduate students to develop a sophisticated computer program that predicts some basic fluid/solid phenomena, and then to use the program to run simulations that teach us how these fluids and solids interact. We can then use that new-found knowledge to examine the coating and separation (and other) processes, to consider how we might improve them based on what we've learned. This research will be impactful in a number of ways: (1) writing the software will require that we develop new algorithms to model some of the complex interactions between particles and fluids, algorithms that we'll share with others working on similar projects; (2) the simulations will contribute new fundamental knowledge of some basic fluid/particle phenomena, of how single particles act at an interface between two fluids, and how clusters of particles come together or break apart; and (3) the research program will train a number of very talented research engineers, developing sought-after skills in modelling and analysis that these young people will then take with them into research leadership positions in industry and academia.