Hydrodynamics of Complex Fluids

Dr. Amy Shen
rMechanical Engineering Department
Washington University in St. Louis

Date:  Thursday, March 25, 2004
Time:  3:30 p.m.
Place:  106 Othmer Hall

Complex fluids are a broad class of materials that have a microstructure that is much smaller than the macroscopic scale but much larger than molecular size. My research involves the application of quantitative methods to problems in complex fluids with important biomedical and industrial applications. In this talk I will focus on three particular examples:

1. Evaporation induced mesoporous films (how fluid rheology controls the pore size?)

2. non-Newtonian fluids inside microfluidic devices

3. Flow dynamics of granular flow.

These examples will present some common approaches of studying complex fluids and the major challenges in this field.