Seminar Abstract
January 26, 2004
"Mesoscale Modeling of Soft Condensed Matter:
Application to Complex Fluids and Membranes"
Dr. Daniel M. Kroll
Supercomputing Institute for Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation
University of Minnesota
Complex fluids, such as amphiphilic mixtures, colloidal suspensions,
and polymer solutions, mixtures, and melts, are characterized by
structure on mesoscopic length-scales -- ranging from nano- to
micrometers -- and energy scales comparable to the thermal energy.
The meso-scale structures of these systems endow them with many
interesting and unique features, and they are widely used in
the processing, chemical, and energy industries.
Complex fluids present a challenge for conventional methods of
simulation due to the presence of disparate time scales in
their dynamics. The unique problems associated with the modeling
and analysis of the behavior of these systems have created
the need for new simulation techniques that overcome some of the
difficulties associated with the use of atomistic molecular
dynamics simulations and macroscopic approaches based on
the numerical solution of continuum equations. The modeling of
these systems requires the use of "coarse-grained" or mesoscopic
approaches that mimic the behavior of atomistic systems on the
length scales of interest. The goal is to incorporate the essential
features of the microscopic and mesoscopic physics in models that are
computationally efficient and are easily implemented in complex
geometries and on parallel computers.
In this lecture, recent research involving the development and
application of a range of mesoscale simulation techniques will be
summarized. Work involving the use of coarse-grained, dynamically
triangulated surface models of membranes to study the budding of
crystalline (clathrin-coated pits) in fluid membranes and the
phase behavior and structure of microemulsions -- membranes
of fluctuating topology -- will be described, and a recently developed
particle-based mesoscopic simulation technique for fluid flow
will be discussed. Some future research involving extensions of these
techniques to model the dynamics and rheology of complex mixtures
will be outlined.
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