U.S.-Argentina Cooperative Research: Instabilities In the Flow of Thin Liquid Films

0122911

Kondic

This Americas Program award will support Dr. Ljubinko Lou Kondic of the New Jersey Institute of Technology in collaboration with Dr. Javier A. Diez of the Institute of Physics of the Universidad Nacional del Centro in Tandil, Argentina. The researchers intend to work on the computational and theoretical analysis of the interface dynamics and instabilities in thin film flows.

The main subject of the proposed research is to apply existing, and develop new compu- tational methods for a variety of problems related to thin film flows. In particular the researchers will concentrate on problems where the fundamental issues related to the development of instability are still not well understood. This includes thin film flows on imperfect surfaces, flows of non-Newtonian fluids, and surfactant flows. They also plan to extend computational and theoretical methods to other areas (such as spin coating) that are relevant, not only because of challenging theoretical and computational issues, but also because of their importance in a variety of technological applications. The research will combine the U.S. researcher's expertise with the computational aspects of the project with the Argentinean researcher's theoretical expertise.