November 13, 2002:

"Oscillations in Phase Separating Binary Fluids with Continuously Ramped Temperature:
A Numerical Investigation"

    

Professor Alexander Wagner
Department of Physics
North Dakota State University

I will describe our research on the demixing of a binary fluid mixture, under gravity, which is steadily driven into a two-phase region by slowly ramping the temperature. This system has two competing nonlinearities. One of these arises because the supersaturation is greatest far from the meniscus, creating inversions of the density, which can lead to fluid motion. The other is the intrinsic diffusive instability, which results either in nucleation or in spinodal decomposition at large supersaturations. I will show how such a system can be analyzed and present numerical simulations that illustrate some of the important processes.