Date of Award

2012

Publisher

North Dakota State University

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Awarded

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Program

Physics

Department

Physics

College

Science and Mathematics

Faculty Advisor

Wagner, Alexander J.

Description

My dissertation is an investigation into the basic Physics of phase separation fronts. Such phase-separation fronts occur in many practical applications, like the formation of immersion precipitation membranes, Temperature induced phase-separation of polymeric blends, or the formation of steel. Despite the fact that these phenomena are ubiquitous no generally acceptable theory of phase-separation front exists. I believe the reason lies in the complexity of many of these material systems where a large number of physical effects (like phase-separation, crystallization, hydrodynamics, etc) cooperate to generate these structures. As a Physicist, I was driven to develop an understanding of these systems, and we choose to start our investigation with the simplest system that would incorporate a phase-separation front. So we initially limited our study to systems with a purely diffusive dynamics. The phase-separation front is induced by a control-parameter front that is a simple step function advancing with a prescribed velocity. We investigated these systems numerically using a lattice Boltzmann method and also investigated them analytically as much as possible. Starting from a one-dimensional front moving with a constant velocity we then extended the complexity of the systems by increasing the number of dimensions, examining a variable front velocity, and finally by including hydrodynamics.

Rights

NDSU Policy 190.6.2

Rights Link

https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/policy/190.pdf

Handle Identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/10365/26657

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