THE LEVICH INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES THE FOLLOWING SEMINAR

Tuesday, 10/10/2000
4:00 PM
Steinman Hall, Room #1M-22

Professor Yitzhak Shnidman
Department of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Materials Science
Polytechnic University

"Statistical Mechanics of Wetting and Adhesion: Statics and Dynamics"

ABSTRACT

Multiphase flows, and such interfacial processes as wetting and adhesion typically proceed under external stresses that drive such systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium. Interfacial deformations and flows strive to relax towards equilibrium as dissipative processes with characteristic rates. Equilibrium models based on a minimization of a free energy are inadequate for such processes. It will be shown how dynamic lattice-gas models based on a Markov-chain description of dissipative processes and on appropriate conservation laws can be derived. Such models provide time evolution equations for interfacial flows and deformations in multiphase flows, wetting and adhesion, thus relating the evolution of both morphology and rheology to microscopic interaction parameters. Results of computational applications of these dynamic lattice-gas models to simple fluids and solids will be discussed, and compared to experiments and to other modeling methods. Finally, a generalization of this approach incorporating chain conformation statistics in polymer fluids will be outlined.

BRIEF ACADEMIC/EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

• Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), 81-84, Ph.D. (Physics)
• Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, Polytechnic University, June 98 - present.
• Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Feb. 98 - present.
• Senior Research Scientist, Eastman Kodak Company, May 92 - Jan. 98.
• Research Scientist, Eastman Kodak Company, Feb. 1989 - April 92.
• Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Physics, Virginia Tech, Nov. 86 – Aug. 88.
• Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of California at Santa Barbara, Oct. 84 – Sep. 86.

RECENT RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Computational modeling of interfacial structure and dynamics in fluids and thin films: A. Statics and dynamics of wetting, adsorption, adhesion and nucleation. B. Structure and rheology of complex fluids and polymers. C. Ordering and transport in nonequilibrium and disordered systems.


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