Tea and coffee will be served from 16.45 in the Senior Common Room.
The viscosity of a fluid is an important macroscopic property, as it characterizes the ‘ease’ with which a fluid can flow. It arises as a direct consequence of underlying molecular motion and the resulting exchange of momentum and energy between colliding molecules.
The talk will explore the relationship between the viscosity and the interactions among individual molecules and will review our current understanding, focusing on outlining the differences in treating dilute and dense systems.
In particular, it will be argued that for dilute gases the methodology and hardware is now in place to accurately calculate viscosity directly from knowledge of the forces between the molecules. For dense systems one has to rely on more approximate approaches as the lack of rigorous theory precludes more fundamental developments.
Biography
Velisa Vesovic obtained his BSc and PhD in chemical engineering from Imperial and is now the theme leader for the Energy Futures Lab Oil and Gas Network and Head of the Petroleum Geoscience and Engineering research section in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering.
His core research interest is in understanding and modelling the underlying physics of transport phenomena relevant to chemical and petroleum engineering applications. At one end of the spectrum is the fundamental research into understanding molecular interactions and at the other applied research into modelling the transport of species within fluids associated with petroleum reservoir exploitation, industrial operations or accidental releases.
Velisa has published over a hundred papers and is the co-developer of a successful model for the prediction of viscosity of dense fluid mixtures, the VW methodology.