Diffuse-Interface methods in fluid mechanics

Anderson, D.M., McFadden, G.B. and Wheeler, A.A. (1998) Diffuse-Interface methods in fluid mechanics. Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, 30, 139-165. (doi:10.1146/annurev.fluid.30.1.139).

Record type: Article

Abstract

We review the development of diffuse-interface models of hydrodynamics and their application to a wide variety of interfacial phenomena. These models have been applied successfully to situations in which the physical phenomena of interest have a length scale commensurate with the thickness of the interfacial region (e.g. near-critical interfacial phenomena or small-scale flows such as those occurring near contact lines) and fluid flows involving large interface deformations and/or topological changes (e.g. breakup and coalescence events associated with fluid jets, droplets, and large-deformation waves). We discuss the issues involved in formulating diffuse-interface models for single-component and binary fluids. Recent applications and computations using these models are discussed in each case. Further, we address issues including sharp-interface analyses that relate these models to the classical free-boundary problem, computational approaches to describe interfacial phenomena, and models of fully miscible fluids.

This record has no associated files available for download.