Viscosity of Colloidal Suspensions

Simple expressions are given for the Newtonian viscosity $\eta_N(\phi)$ as well as the viscoelastic behavior of the viscosity $\eta(\phi,\omega)$ of neutral monodisperse hard sphere colloidal suspensions as a function of volume fraction $\phi$ and frequency $\omega$ over the entire fluid range, i.e., for volume fractions $0 < \phi < 0.55$. These expressions are based on an approximate theory which considers the viscosity as composed as the sum of two relevant physical processes: $\eta (\phi,\omega) = \eta_{\infty}(\phi) + \eta_{cd}(\phi,\omega)$, where $\eta_{\infty}(\phi) = \eta_0 \chi(\phi)$ is the infinite frequency (or very short time) viscosity, with $\eta_0$ the solvent viscosity, $\chi(\phi)$ the equilibrium hard sphere radial distribution function at contact, and $\eta_{cd}(\phi,\omega)$ the contribution due to the diffusion of the colloidal particles out of cages formed by their neighbors, on the P\'{e}clet time scale $\tau_P$, the dominant physical process in concentrated colloidal suspensions. The Newtonian viscosity $\eta_N(\phi) = \eta(\phi,\omega = 0)$ agrees very well with the extensive experiments of Van der Werff et al and others. Also, the asymptotic behavior for large $\omega$ is of the form $\eta_{\infty}(\phi) + A(\phi)(\omega \tau_P)^{-1/2}$, in agreement with these experiments, but the theoretical coefficient $A(\phi)$ differs by a constant factor $2/\chi(\phi)$ from the exact coefficient, computed from the Green-Kubo formula for $\eta(\phi,\omega)$. This still enables us to predict for practical purposes the visco-elastic behavior of monodisperse spherical colloidal suspensions for all volume fractions by a simple time rescaling.Comment: 51 page

The dynamics of superfluid 4He

We present neutron scattering results for the dynamic response by superfluid and normal-fluid 4He and the results of a simple perturbation-theory analysis which allows us to describe all aspects of the observed behavior by considering only density fluctuations. We show that the three key features that are characteristic of the dynamic reponse of superfluid 4He, as well as their dramatic variations with temperature, can be attributed predominantly to the Bose statistics obeyed by all the 4He atoms. It appears that the presence of the Bose condensate exerts at most a minor influence on the dynamic response.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. Material closely related to W. Montfrooij and E.C. Svensson, Journal of Low Temperature Physics, Vol. 121, p. 293-302 (2000

Transport in a highly asymmetric binary fluid mixture

We present molecular dynamics calculations of the thermal conductivity and viscosities of a model colloidal suspension with colloidal particles roughly one order of magnitude larger than the suspending liquid molecules. The results are compared with estimates based on the Enskog transport theory and effective medium theories (EMT) for thermal and viscous transport. We find, in particular, that EMT remains well applicable for predicting both the shear viscosity and thermal conductivity of such suspensions when the colloidal particles have a ``typical'' mass, i.e. much larger than the liquid molecules. Very light colloidal particles on the other hand yield higher thermal conductivities, in disagreement with EMT. We also discuss the consequences of these results to some proposed mechanisms for thermal conduction in nanocolloidal suspensions.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Physical Review E (2007

Liquid-gas-solid flows with lattice Boltzmann: Simulation of floating bodies

This paper presents a model for the simulation of liquid-gas-solid flows by means of the lattice Boltzmann method. The approach is built upon previous works for the simulation of liquid-solid particle suspensions on the one hand, and on a liquid-gas free surface model on the other. We show how the two approaches can be unified by a novel set of dynamic cell conversion rules. For evaluation, we concentrate on the rotational stability of non-spherical rigid bodies floating on a plane water surface - a classical hydrostatic problem known from naval architecture. We show the consistency of our method in this kind of flows and obtain convergence towards the ideal solution for the measured heeling stability of a floating box.Comment: 22 pages, Preprint submitted to Computers and Mathematics with Applications Special Issue ICMMES 2011, Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference for Mesoscopic Methods in Engineering and Scienc

Nonlinear viscoelasticity of metastable complex fluids

Many metastable complex fluids such as colloidal glasses and gels show distinct nonlinear viscoelasticity with increasing oscillatory-strain amplitude; the storage modulus decreases monotonically as the strain amplitude increases whereas the loss modulus has a distinct peak before it decreases at larger strains. We present a qualitative argument to explain this ubiquitous behavior and use mode coupling theory (MCT) to confirm it. We compare theoretical predictions to the measured nonlinear viscoelasticity in a dense hard sphere colloidal suspensions; reasonable agreement is obtained. The argument given here can be used to obtain new information about linear viscoelasticity of metastable complex fluids from nonlinear strain measurements.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Europhys. Let

Mesoscopic two-phase model for describing apparent slip in micro-channel flows

The phenomenon of apparent slip in micro-channel flows is analyzed by means of a two-phase mesoscopic lattice Boltzmann model including non-ideal fluid-fluid and fluid-wall interactins. The weakly-inhomogeneous limit of this model is solved analytically. The present mesoscopic approach permits to access much larger scales than molecular dynamics, and comparable with those attained by continuum methods. However, at variance with the continuum approach, the existence of a gas layer near the wall does not need to be postulated a priori, but emerges naturally from the underlying non-ideal mesoscopic dynamics. It is therefore argued that a mesoscopic Lattice Boltzmann approach with non-ideal fluid-fluid and fluid-wall interactions might achieve an optimal compromise between physical realism and computational efficiency for the study of channel micro-flows.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Steady State Convergence Acceleration of the Generalized Lattice Boltzmann Equation with Forcing Term through Preconditioning

Several applications exist in which lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM) are used to compute stationary states of fluid motions, particularly those driven or modulated by external forces. Standard LBM, being explicit time-marching in nature, requires a long time to attain steady state convergence, particularly at low Mach numbers due to the disparity in characteristic speeds of propagation of different quantities. In this paper, we present a preconditioned generalized lattice Boltzmann equation (GLBE) with forcing term to accelerate steady state convergence to flows driven by external forces. The use of multiple relaxation times in the GLBE allows enhancement of the numerical stability. Particular focus is given in preconditioning external forces, which can be spatially and temporally dependent. In particular, correct forms of moment-projections of source/forcing terms are derived such that they recover preconditioned Navier-Stokes equations with non-uniform external forces. As an illustration, we solve an extended system with a preconditioned lattice kinetic equation for magnetic induction field at low magnetic Prandtl numbers, which imposes Lorentz forces on the flow of conducting fluids. Computational studies, particularly in three-dimensions, for canonical problems show that the number of time steps needed to reach steady state is reduced by orders of magnitude with preconditioning. In addition, the preconditioning approach resulted in significantly improved stability characteristics when compared with the corresponding single relaxation time formulation.Comment: 47 pages, 21 figures, for publication in Journal of Computational Physic