Premium
Atomistic SPH and a link between diffusion and interfacial tension
Author(s) -
Nitsche Ludwig C.,
Zhang Weidong
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
aiche journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 167
eISSN - 1547-5905
pISSN - 0001-1541
DOI - 10.1002/aic.690480203
Subject(s) - smoothed particle hydrodynamics , statistical physics , diffusion , brownian motion , surface tension , mechanics , computation , classical mechanics , physics , mathematics , thermodynamics , algorithm , quantum mechanics
The mesh‐free method of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is interpreted atomistically to treat the local density of nodes as representing solute concentration, instead of interpolating a concentration field between function values at the nodes. We exploit the conceptual simplicity of tracking little packets (representing supermolecular aggregates) of solute, as in Brownian dynamics simulations, but replace the stochastic generation of diffusive spreading over statistically independent realizations with a purely deterministic summation for extracting the local diffusion velocity using only the instantaneous locations of nearby nodes. Four test problems demonstrate the versatility and accuracy of the atomistic SPH method (ASPH) for mass transfer. Finally, by comparing ASPH with a new Stokeslet‐swarm technique for simulating drop flows (Nitsche and Schaflinger, 2001), a fundamental analogy between diffusion and interfacial tension is exposed.