No Arabic abstract
Phase separation of binary fluids quenched by contact with cold external walls is considered. Navier-Stokes, convection-diffusion, and energy equations are solved by lattice Boltzmann method coupled with finite-difference schemes. At high viscosity, different morphologies are observed by varying the thermal diffusivity. In the range of thermal diffusivities with domains growing parallel to the walls, temperature and phase separation fronts propagate towards the inner of the system with power-law behavior. At low viscosity hydrodynamics favors rounded shapes, and complex patterns with different lengthscales appear. Off-symmetrical systems behave similarly but with more ordered configurations.
We use lattice Boltzmann simulations to study the effect of shear on the phase ordering of a two-dimensional binary fluid. The shear is imposed by generalising the lattice Boltzmann algorithm to include Lees-Edwards boundary conditions. We show how the interplay between the ordering effects of the spinodal decomposition and the disordering tendencies of the shear, which depends on the shear rate and the fluid viscosity, can lead to a state of dynamic equilibrium where domains are continually broken up and re-formed.
We report that binary dispersions of like-charged colloidal particles with large charge asymmetry but similar size exhibit phase separation into crystal and fluid phases under very low salt conditions. This is unexpected because the effective colloid-colloid pair interactions are accurately described by a Yukawa model which is stable to demixing. We show that colloid-ion interactions provide an energetic driving force for phase separation, which is initiated by crystallization of one species.
We find that a system of particles interacting through a simple isotropic potential with a softened core is able to exhibit a rich phase behavior including: a liquid-liquid phase transition in the supercooled phase, as has been suggested for water; a gas-liquid-liquid triple point; a freezing line with anomalous reentrant behavior. The essential ingredient leading to these features resides in that the potential investigated gives origin to two effective core radii.
We study the thermodynamic stability of fluid-fluid phase separation in binary nonadditive mixtures of hard-spheres for moderate size ratios. We are interested in elucidating the role played by small amounts of nonadditivity in determining the stability of fluid-fluid phase separation with respect to the fluid-solid phase transition. The demixing curves are built in the framework of the modified-hypernetted chain and of the Rogers-Young integral equation theories through the calculation of the Gibbs free energy. We also evaluate fluid-fluid phase equilibria within a first-order thermodynamic perturbation theory applied to an effective one-component potential obtained by integrating out the degrees of freedom of the small spheres. A qualitative agreement emerges between the two different approaches. We also address the determination of the freezing line by applying the first-order thermodynamic perturbation theory to the effective interaction between large spheres. Our results suggest that for intermediate size ratios a modest amount of nonadditivity, smaller than earlier thought, can be sufficient to drive the fluid-fluid critical point into the thermodinamically stable region of the phase diagram. These findings could be significant for rare-gas mixtures in extreme pressure and temperature conditions, where nonadditivity is expected to be rather small.
We study numerically and analytically a model of self-propelled polar disks on a substrate in two dimensions. The particles interact via isotropic repulsive forces and are subject to rotational noise, but there is no aligning interaction. As a result, the system does not exhibit an ordered state. The isotropic fluid phase separates well below close packing and exhibits the large number fluctuations and clustering found ubiquitously in active systems. Our work shows that this behavior is a generic property of systems that are driven out of equilibrium locally, as for instance by self propulsion.