Microscopic Simulations of Complex Flows

Microscopic Simulations of Complex Flows PDF Author: Michel Mareschal
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1468413392
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This volume contains the proceedings of a workshop which was held in Brussels during the month of August 1989. A strong motivation for organizing this workshop was to bring together people who have been involved in the microscopic simulation of phenomena occuring on "large" space and time scales. Indeed, results obtained in the last years by different groups tend to support the idea that macroscopic behavior already appears in systems small enough so as to be modelled by a collection of interacting particles on a (super) computer. Such an approach is certainly desirable to study situations where no satisfactory phenomenological theory is known to hold, or where solutions of the equations are too hard to obtain numerically. It is also interesting from a more fundamental point of view, namely the investigation of the limits of validity of the macroscopic description itself. The main technique used in bridging the gap between the macro and micro worlds has been the molecular dynamics simulations, that is the numerical solution of the equations of motion of the model particles which constitute the system under study, a gas, a liquid or even a solid. However, this technique is by no means the only one.

Microscopic Simulations of Complex Flows

Microscopic Simulations of Complex Flows PDF Author: Michel Mareschal
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1468413392
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume contains the proceedings of a workshop which was held in Brussels during the month of August 1989. A strong motivation for organizing this workshop was to bring together people who have been involved in the microscopic simulation of phenomena occuring on "large" space and time scales. Indeed, results obtained in the last years by different groups tend to support the idea that macroscopic behavior already appears in systems small enough so as to be modelled by a collection of interacting particles on a (super) computer. Such an approach is certainly desirable to study situations where no satisfactory phenomenological theory is known to hold, or where solutions of the equations are too hard to obtain numerically. It is also interesting from a more fundamental point of view, namely the investigation of the limits of validity of the macroscopic description itself. The main technique used in bridging the gap between the macro and micro worlds has been the molecular dynamics simulations, that is the numerical solution of the equations of motion of the model particles which constitute the system under study, a gas, a liquid or even a solid. However, this technique is by no means the only one.

Advances in Chemical Physics, Volume 100

Advances in Chemical Physics, Volume 100 PDF Author: Ilya Prigogine
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 047014212X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 707

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Book Description
The Advances in Chemical Physics series provides the chemical physics and physical chemistry fields with a forum for critical, authoritative evaluations of advances in every area of the discipline. Filled with cutting-edge research reported in a cohesive manner not found elsewhere in the literature, each volume of the Advances in Chemical Physics series serves as the perfect supplement to any advanced graduate class devoted to the study of chemical physics.

Advances in the Computer Simulations of Liquid Crystals

Advances in the Computer Simulations of Liquid Crystals PDF Author: Paolo Pasini
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792360995
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Erice, 11-21 June 1998

Modeling Complex Phenomena

Modeling Complex Phenomena PDF Author: Lui Lam
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461392292
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Once upon a time, science was not divided into disciplines as we know it today. There was no distinction between so-called social and natural sciences, not to mention the fragmentation of the latter into physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. According to legend, the scientists those days would do their research in whatever environment they happened to find comfortable, which more often than not was in bathtubs or giant hot tubs - remember Archimedes! Then, somehow, these days we find ourselves compartmentalized into different departments in our universities, or divisions in our research institutes. (We suspect, for one thing, that is to ensure that we will get our paychecks delivered on time at the end of each month. ) Anyway, as anyone who has worked in the real world knows: when one is confronted with a completely new problem or phenomenon, it is usually impossible to neatly assign the problem to physics, chemistry, or, for that matter, computer science. One needs to recall and fuse together the knowledge one learned before and, if that alone is insufficient, to consult experts in other areas. This points to the shortcomings of the compartmentalization of knowledge in our educational systems. In recent years, something has changed. Under the banner of Complex Systems, some brave souls are not afraid to tackle problems that are considered intractable by others, and dare to venture out of their trained disciplines or departments to which they are attached.

Soft Order in Physical Systems

Soft Order in Physical Systems PDF Author: R. Bruinsma
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 146152458X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A humoristic view of the physics of soft matter, which nevertheless has a ring of truth to it, is that it is an ill-defined subject which deals with ill-condensed matter by ill-defined methods. Although, since the Nobel prize was awarded to Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, this subject can be no longer shrugged-away as "sludge physics" by the physics community, it is still not viewed universally as "main stream" physics. While, at first glance, this may be considered as another example of inertia, a case of the "establishment" against the "newcomer", the roots of this prejudice are much deeper and can be traced back to Roger Bacon's conception about the objectivity of science. All of us would agree with the weaker form of this idea which simply says that the final results of our work should be phrased in an observer-independent way and be communicable to anybody who made the effort to learn this language. There exists, however, a stronger form of this idea according to which the above criteria of "objectivity" and "communicability" apply also to the process of scientific inquiry. The fact that major progress in the physics of soft matter was made in apparent violation of this approach, by applying intuition to problems which appeared to defy rigorous analysis, may explain why many physicists feel somewhat ill-at-ease with this subject.

Singularities in Fluids, Plasmas and Optics

Singularities in Fluids, Plasmas and Optics PDF Author: Russel Caflisch
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401120226
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Singularities in Fluids, Plasmas and Optics, which contains the proceedings of a NATO Workshop held in Heraklion, Greece, in July 1992, provides a survey of the state of the art in the analysis and computation of singularities in physical problems drawn from fluid mechanics, plasma physics and nonlinear optics. The singularities include curvature singularities on fluid interfaces, the onset of turbulence in 3-D inviscid flows, focusing singularities for laser beams, and magnetic reconnection. The highlights of the book include the nonlinear Schrödinger equation for describing laser beam focusing, the method of complex variables for the analysis and computation of singularities on fluid interfaces, and studies of singularities for the 3-D Euler equations. The book is suitable for graduate students and researchers in these areas.

Future Directions of Nonlinear Dynamics in Physical and Biological Systems

Future Directions of Nonlinear Dynamics in Physical and Biological Systems PDF Author: P.L. Christiansen
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1489916091
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 549

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Book Description
Early in 1990 a scientific committee was formed for the purpose of organizing a high-level scientific meeting on Future Directions of Nonlinear Dynamics in Physical and Biological Systems, in honor of Alwyn Scott's 60th birthday (December 25, 1991). As preparations for the meeting proceeded, they were met with an unusually broad-scale and high level of enthusiasm on the part of the international nonlinear science community, resulting in a participation by 168 scientists from 23 different countries in the conference, which was held July 23 to August 11992 at the Laboratory of Applied Mathematical Physics and the Center for Modelling, Nonlinear Dynamics and Irreversible Thermodynamics (MIDIT) of the Technical University of Denmark. During the meeting about 50 lectures and 100 posters were presented in 9 working days. The contributions to this present volume have been grouped into the following chapters: 1. Integrability, Solitons, and Coherent Structures 2. Nonlinear Evolution Equations and Diffusive Systems 3. Chaotic and Stochastic Dynamics 4. Classical and Quantum Lattices and Fields 5. Superconductivity and Superconducting Devices 6. Nonlinear Optics 7. Davydov Solitons and Biomolecular Dynamics 8. Biological Systems and Neurophysics. AI Scott has made early and fundamental contributions to many of these different areas of nonlinear science. They form an important subset of the total number of the papers and posters presented at the meeting. Other papers from the meeting are being published in a special issue of Physica D Nonlinear Phenomena.

Interactive Dynamics of Convection and Solidification

Interactive Dynamics of Convection and Solidification PDF Author: S.H. Davis
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940112809X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
The phase transformation from liquid to solid is a phenomenon central to a wide range of manufacturing and natural processes. The presence of phase transformation can drive convection in the melt through the liberation of latent heat, the rejection of solute, and the change of density upon freezing. The fluid mechanics itself can playa central role; the phase transformation can be strongly altered by convective transport in the liquid through the modification of the thermal and solutal environment of the solid-liquid interface; these local fields control the freezing characteristics at the interface. The convection can be generated naturally by buoyancy forces arising from gradients of temperature and concentration in the liquid, by density changes upon freezing, and by thermocapillary and solutocapillary forces on liquid-solid interfaces. The interactive coupling between solidification and convection forms the subject of this volume. Such coupled processes are significant on a large range of scales. Among the applications of interest are the manufacture of single crystals, the processing of surfaces using laser or molecular beams, and the processes of soldering and welding. One wants to understand and predict macrosegregation in castings, transport and fractionation in geological and geophysical systems, and heat accumulation in energy redistribution and storage systems. This volume contains papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Interactive Dynamics of Convection and Solidification" held in Chamonix, France, March 8-13, 1992.

Biologically Inspired Physics

Biologically Inspired Physics PDF Author: L. Peliti
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1475794835
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
The workshop "Biologically Inspired Physics" was organized, with the support of the NATO Scientific Affairs Division and the Directorate-General for Science, Research and Development of the Commission of the European Communities, in order to review some subjects of physics of condensed matter which are inspired by biological problems or deal with biological systems, but which address physical questions. The main topics discussed in the meeting were: 1. Macromolecules: In particular, proteins and nucleic acids. Special emphasis was placed on modelling protein folding, where analogies with disordered systems in con densed matter (glasses, spin glasses) were suggested. It is not clear at this point whether such analogies will help in solving the folding problem. Interesting problems in nucleic acids (in particular DNA) deal with the dynamics of semiflexible chains with torsion and the relationship between topology and local structure. They arise from such biological problems as DNA packing or supercoiling. 2. Membranes: This field has witnessed recent progress in the understanding of the statistical mechanics of fluctuating flexible sheets, such as lipid bilayers. It appears that one is close to understanding shape fluctuations in red blood cells on a molec ular basis. Open problems arise from phenomena such as budding or membrane fusion. Experiments on model systems, such as vesicle systems or artificial lipids, have great potential. Phenomena occurring inside the membrane (protein diffusion, ionic pumps) were only discussed briefly.

Complexity, Chaos, and Biological Evolution

Complexity, Chaos, and Biological Evolution PDF Author: Erik Mosekilde
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1468478478
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
From time to time, perhaps a few times each century, a revolution occurs that questions some of our basic beliefs and sweeps across otherwise well guarded disciplinary boundaries. These are the periods when science is fun, when new paradigms have to be formulated, and when young scientists can do serious work without first having to acquire all the knowledge of their teachers. The emergence of nonlinear science appears to be one such revolution. In a surprising manner, this new science has disclosed a number of misconceptions in our traditional understanding of determinism. In particular, it has been shown that the notion of predictability, according to which the trajectory of a system can be precisely determined if one knows the equations of motion and the initial conditions, is related to textbook examples of simple; integrable systems. This predictability does not extend to nonlinear, conservative systems in general. Dissipative systems can also show unpredictability, provided that the motion is sustained by externally supplied energy and/or resources. These discoveries, and the associated discovery that even relatively simple nonlinear systems can show extremely complex behavior, have brought about an unprecedented feeling of common interest among scientists from many different disciplines. During the last decade or two we have come to understand that there are universal routes to chaos, we have learned about stretching and folding, and we have discovered the beautiful fractal geometry underlying chaotic attractors.