Research/Research Areas

Complex Fluids and Nanostructured Materials

Chiew, Glasser, Hara, Muzzio, Shapley, Scheinbeim, Tomassone, Neimark

Complex fluid flows, including non-Newtonian flows and suspension flows, are of importance to a large number of industries, including the chemical, pharmaceutical, environmental, energy and catalyst manufacturing industries. Industries that process complex fluids are often plagued by poor performance due to unwanted segregation, and erratic flow rates caused by complex rheological behavior. At the same time, there is a push to transport, assemble and control the motion of nanoparticles in order to produce nanostructured materials. Departmental research in Complex Fluids and Nanostructured Materials has particular strengths in the areas of granular flow, multiphase flow of suspensions, emulsions and bubbly flows, polymer structure-property relationships, mixing processes, nucleation and self-assembly, and transport in porous media. We study the mechanics of these systems through combined numerical, theoretical and experimental efforts. Many of the research topics have direct application to the basic unit operations of modern pharmaceutical manufacturing, such as therapeutic nanoparticle synthesis, characterization and delivery, powder mixing, tablet production, coating, and dissolution, fluidized bed reaction and coating processes, and catalyst particle production. Other applications include environmental remediation, biomedical sensors, processing of advanced materials, and alternative energy.