Effect of convection and viscoelasticity on spinodal decomposition in fluids

Kumaran, V (1999) Effect of convection and viscoelasticity on spinodal decomposition in fluids. In: 4th Meeting of the Royal-Society-Unilever-Indo-UK Forum in Materials Science and Engineering, 1999, Pune, India.

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Abstract

Current analytical work on the effect of convection and viscoelasticity on the early and late stages of spinodal decomposition is briefly described. In the early stages, the effect of viscoelastic stresses was analysed using a simple Maxwell model for the stress, which was incorporated in the Langevin equation for the momentum field. The viscoelastic stresses are found to enhance the rate of decomposition. In the late stages, the pattern formed depends on the relative composition of the two species. Droplet spinodal decomposition occurs when the concentration of one of the species is small. Convective transport does not have a significant effect on the growth of a single droplet, but it does result in an attractive interaction between non - Brownian droplets which could lead to coalescence. The effect of convective transport for the growth of random interfaces in a near symmetric quench was analysed using an 'area distribution function', which gives the distribution of surface area of the interface in curvature space. It was found that the curvature of the interface decreases proportional to t in the late stages of spinodal decomposition, and the surface area also decreases proportional to t.

Item Type:	Conference Paper
Publisher:	Imperial College Press
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to Imperial College Press.
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Chemical Engineering
Date Deposited:	16 Mar 2012 09:09
Last Modified:	16 Mar 2012 09:09
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/43900

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