THE LEVICH INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES THE FOLLOWING SEMINAR:

Tuesday, 9/22/98
4:00 PM
Steinman Hall, Room #1M-22
Professor Howard Stone
Harvard University
Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences
"Dynamics of Foam Drainage"


ABSTRACT

The drainage of liquid foams involves the interplay of gravity, surface tension, and viscous forces. Here two experimentally accessible configurations are treated: free drainage where liquid drains from an initially uniform foam of fixed length, and pulsed drainage where a finite blob of liquid spreads in an otherwise dry foam. Similarity solutions of a model one-dimensional nonlinear partial differential equation are described in each case, and compared with numerical solutions and available experimental data. The model is generalized to three dimensions and used to discuss some further examples of pulsed drainage.

BRIEF ACADEMIC/EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

1982 B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of California, Davis
1988 Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, Caltech
1988 NSF-NATO Postdoc, DAMTP, Cambridge University
1989- Harvard University
February - July, 1997 Visiting Professor, ESPCI, Paris

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Recent research themes in Professor Stone's group includes (1) translation of small particles in thin viscous sheets or membranes, (2) fluid mechanical studies with applications to MEMS, (3) liquid drainage and fluid dynamics of foams, (4) the effect of electric fields on the shape and interactions of fluid droplets, (5) mass transfer primarily as it arises in model problems in electrochemistry, (6) particle motion in rotating flows, (7) swimming micro-organisms, and (8) drop dynamics and breakup. There are on-going projects in each of these areas as well as more recent work on coating flows, Marangoni-driven motions, inertial effects on low-Reynolds-number flows, and heat transfer in porous materials.


Return to Fall, 1998 Seminar Schedule