When   Monday, May 4, 2009   Time   4:00 PM - 5:00 PM  
Where   Technological Instit M 416 2145 Sheridan Rd.   map it
Audience   - Faculty/Staff - Student - Public
Contact   Molly E Scanlon   +1 847 491 5586  
Group   McCormick-Colloquia Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics

Applied Math Colloquium

Title:  Marangoni convection in binary liquids and nanofluids in the presence of the Soret effect

Speaker: Dr. A. Podolny, Northwestern University

Abstract:

The Ph.D thesis of the applicant belongs to the fascinating field of non-linear instabilities of surface-tension-driven flows. This kind of instabilities is especially important for engineering processes under microgravity conditions, for example, for production of semiconductor crystals, as well as for micro-fluidic flows with free surfaces. The previous works in that field had dealt mainly with pure liquids, while the substances really used in microgravity technologies are typically solutions.

Recently a new class of fluids, nanofluids, has been successfully applied in heat transfer devices. Formerly, the basic applications of this new kind of fluids were connected with a single-phase transfer, therefore, the interfacial phenomena for these fluids were hardly investigated. In some new applications, specifically for heat pipes used for cooling on the board of spacecraft, the Marangoni convection is crucial.

In the Ph.D thesis the problems of surface-tension-driven instabilities in binary solutions and nanofluids in the presence of thermodiffusion weresolved. We show that the correct model for the description of the hydrodynamics and heat transfer in nanofluids is identical to the system of equations for binary mixture with the Soret effect. The research presents a unified the- oretical description of Marangoni convection, which can be applied for both binary solutions and nanofluids.