No Arabic abstract
Brownian Dynamics simulations are an important tool for modeling the dynamics of soft matter. However, accurate and rapid computations of the hydrodynamic interactions between suspended, microscopic components in a soft material is a significant computational challenge. Here, we present a new method for Brownian Dynamics simulations of suspended colloidal scale particles subject to an important class of hydrodynamic constraints with practically linear scaling of the computational cost with the number of particles modeled. Specifically, we consider the stresslet constraint for which suspended particles resist local deformation. The presented method is an extension of the recently reported positively-split formulation for Ewald summation of the Rotne-Prager-Yamakawa (RPY) mobility tensor to higher order (dipole) terms in the hydrodynamic scattering series [Andrew M. Fiore et al. The Journal of Chemical Physics, 146(12):124116, 2017]. The hydrodynamic mobility tensor, which is proportional to the covariance of particle Brownian displacements, is constructed as an Ewald sum in a novel way that guarantees the real-space and wave-space sums are independently positive-definite for all possible particle configurations. This property is leveraged to rapidly sample the Brownian displacements from a superposition of statistically independent processes with the wave-space and real-space contributions as respective covariances. The cost of computing the Brownian displacements in this way is comparable to the cost of computing the deterministic displacements. Addition of a stresslet constraint to the over-damped particle equations of motion leads to a stochastic differential algebraic equation (SDAE) of index 1, which is integrated in time using a mid-point integration scheme that implicitly produces displacements consistent with the fluctuation-dissipation theorem for the constrained system.
We present a new method for sampling stochastic displacements in Brownian Dynamics (BD) simulations of colloidal scale particles. The method relies on a new formulation for Ewald summation of the Rotne-Prager-Yamakawa (RPY) tensor, which guarantees that the real-space and wave-space contributions to the tensor are independently symmetric and positive-definite for all possible particle configurations. Brownian displacements are drawn from a superposition of two independent samples: a wave-space (far-field or long-ranged) contribution, computed using techniques from fluctuating hydrodynamics and non-uniform Fast Fourier Transforms; and a real-space (near-field or short-ranged) correction, computed using a Krylov subspace method. The combined computational complexity of drawing these two independent samples scales linearly with the number of particles. The proposed method circumvents the super-linear scaling exhibited by all known iterative sampling methods applied directly to the RPY tensor that results from the power law growth of the condition number of tensor with the number of particles. Calculations for hard sphere dispersions and colloidal gels are illustrated and used to explore the role of microstructure on performance of the algorithm. In practice, the logarithmic part of the predicted scaling is not observed and the algorithm scales linearly for up to 4 million particles, obtaining speed ups of over an order of magnitude over existing iterative methods, and making the cost of computing Brownian displacements comparable the cost of computing deterministic displacements in BD simulations. A high-performance implementation employing non-uniform fast Fourier transforms implemented on graphics processing units and integrated with the software package HOOMD-blue is used for benchmarking.
We present a model describing evolution of the small-scale Navier-Stokes turbulence due to its stochastic distortions by much larger turbulent scales. This study is motivated by numerical findings (laval, 2001) that such interactions of separated scales play important role in turbulence intermittency. We introduce description of turbulence in terms of the moments of the k-space quantities using a method previously developed for the kinematic dynamo problem (Nazarenko, 2003). Working with the $k$-space moments allows to introduce new useful measures of intermittency such as the mean polarization and the spectral flatness. Our study of the 2D turbulence shows that the energy cascade is scale invariant and Gaussian whereas the enstrophy cascade is intermittent. In 3D, we show that the statistics of turbulence wavepackets deviates from gaussianity toward dominance of the plane polarizations. Such turbulence is formed by ellipsoids in the $k$-space centered at its origin and having one large, one neutral and one small axes with the velocity field pointing parallel to the smallest axis.
The long time dynamics of large particles trapped in two inhomogeneous turbulent shear flows is studied experimentally. Both flows present a common feature, a shear region that separates two colliding circulations, but with different spatial symmetries and temporal behaviors. Because large particles are less and less sensitive to flow fluctuations as their size increases, we observe the emergence of a slow dynamics corresponding to back-and-forth motions between two attractors, and a super-slow regime synchronized with flow reversals when they exist. Such dynamics is substantially reproduced by a one dimensional stochastic model of an over-damped particle trapped in a two-well potential, forced by a colored noise. An extended model is also proposed that reproduces observed dynamics and trapping without potential barrier: the key ingredient is the ratio between the time scales of the noise correlation and the particle dynamics. A total agreement with experiments requires the introduction of spatially inhomogeneous fluctuations and a suited confinement strength.
We study numerically the effect of thermal fluctuations and of variable fluid-substrate interactions on the spontaneous dewetting of thin liquid films. To this aim, we use a recently developed lattice Boltzmann method for thin liquid film flows, equipped with a properly devised stochastic term. While it is known that thermal fluctuations yield shorter rupture times, we show that this is a general feature of hydrophilic substrates, irrespective of the contact angle. The ratio between deterministic and stochastic rupture times, though, decreases with $theta$. Finally, we discuss the case of fluctuating thin film dewetting on chemically patterned substrates and its dependence on the form of the wettability gradients.
In analogy with similar effects in adiabatic compressible fluid dynamics, the effects of buoyancy gradients on incompressible stratified flows are said to be `thermal. The thermal rotating shallow water (TRSW) model equations contain three small nondimensional parameters. These are the Rossby number, the Froude number and the buoyancy parameter. Asymptotic expansion of the TRSW model equations in these three small parameters leads to the deterministic therma