This dissertation reports on the computational physics research in the area of
inhomogeneous fluids. I first discuss the theory background for this work beginning
with water, which is important for the two published articles that are presented in
this work (Chapters 5 and 6). Next, I give a brief overview...
The thermodynamic and structural effects of highly anisotropic, short-ranged attraction are investigated for single- and four-site interaction models using Wertheim's multi-density graph theory of chemical association. Both models consist of associating hard spheres, where the saturable attraction sites are described by conical wells centered in the hard core and evaluated...
We investigate the value of the correlation function of an inhomogeneous hard-sphere fluid at contact. This quantity plays a critical role in statistical associating fluid theory, which is the basis of a number of recently developed classical density functionals. We define two averaged values for the correlation function at contact...
Monte Carlo methods are used to explore vapor-liquid phase transitions. However, current models are computationally expensive when identifying these phase transitions. Traditionally, Monte Carlo simulations are run across a range of temperatures at a fixed number of atoms/molecules. The Number Monte Carlo method (NMC), our proposed Monte Carlo method, runs...
We develop a classical density functional for water which combines the White Bear fundamental-measure theory (FMT) functional for the hard sphere fluid with attractive interactions based on the statistical associating fluid theory variable range (SAFT-VR). This functional reproduces the properties of water at both long and short length scales over...
We introduce an approximation for the pair distribution function of the inhomogeneous hard sphere fluid. Our approximation makes use of our recently published averaged pair distribution function at contact, which has been shown to accurately reproduce the averaged pair distribution function at contact for inhomogeneous density distributions. This approach achieves...
The milk fat globule membrane, a major component in buttermilk, contains many complex lipids known to be involved in a variety of biological processes. Phospholipids, including sphingolipids, exhibit antioxidative, anticarcinogenic, and antiatherogenic properties and have essential roles in numerous cell functions. Filtration coupled with supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) may provide...
An experiment on solitary wave impact on a vertical cylinder was conducted in the three-dimensional wave basin at the Oregon State University Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory. The cylinder was designed using mechanic principles and finite element analysis techniques to enable accurate measurement of horizontal force and overturning moment. Video data...
Characterization of local boiling trends, in addition to the typically reported area-averaged trends, is essential for the robust design and implementation of phase change technologies to sensitive heat transfer applications such as electronics cooling. Obtaining the values of heat fluxes corresponding to locally varying surface temperatures has been a challenge...