A foam is a liquid containing gas bubbles in which the liquid fraction is small causing the bubbles to be crowded. The bubbles then have polygonal shape and thin liquid films meet at plateau borders. We present a new approach to studying how foams coarsen by Van der Waals rupture of films and proceed from an organised array to total disorganisation. The new approach involves establishing a network model system that is numerically simulated not only giving ‘visual’ information on the evolution but statistical data on the dynamics.
Professor Stephen H. Davis
Stephen H. Davis, McCormick School (Institute) Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University, received all his degrees at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Ph.D. in Mathematics 1964). He has been Research Mathematician at the RAND Corporation, Lecturer in Mathematics at Imperial College, London, and Assistant, Associate Professor and Full Professor of Mechanics at the Johns Hopkins University. He was Editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and is the Editor of Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics. He has authored over two hundred refereed technical papers in the fields of Fluid Mechanics and Materials Science, and has written a book “Theory of Solidification”. He has twice been Chairman of the Division of Fluid Dynamics of the American Physical Society, is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the 1994 recipient of the Fluid Dynamics Prize of the American Physical Society and the 2001 G. I. Taylor Medal of the Society of Engineering Science.
More information about the speaker Prof. Steve Davis.
The talk will be followed by a reception in the Huxley Common Room.