pps proceeding - Abstract Preview
pps proceeding
Symposium: S07 - Process Modeling and Simulation
Oral Presentation
 
 

A Computational Study of the Rheology and Structure of Surfactant or Co-Polymer Covered Droplets

Maia Joao (1)*, Boromand Arman (1)

(1) Case Western Reserve University - Ohio - USA

The use of different types of surface-active agents and co-polymers is ubiquitous practice in different industrial applications ranging from cosmetic and food industries to polymeric nano-composite and blends. Moreover, the presence and self-assembly of these species on an interface will display complex dynamics and structural evolution under different processing conditions. Analogous to bulk rheology of complex systems, surfactant of co-polymer covered interfaces will respond to external mechanical forces or deformation differently depending on the molecular configuration and topology of the system constituents. Although the effect of molecular configuration of the surface-active molecules on the planar interfaces has been studied both experimentally and computationally, it remains challenging to track the efficiency and effectiveness of different surfactant molecules with different molecular geometries on curved interfaces. In this study we use Dissipative Particle Dynamics to study the effectiveness and efficiency of different surfactant molecules on a curved interface in equilibrium and far from equilibrium. DPD is particularly suited for this problem because it is capable of capturing microscopic phenomena and provide comparison to macroscopic simulations and experiments much faster than Molecular Dynamics. Also, DPD being an off-lattice simulation technique, makes it unnecessary to use any algorithms to track interface position in time, unlike in lattice-Boltzmann simulations and interface deformation will not depend on availability of a suitable interfacial constitutive equations, as is the case of Boundary Integral Methods. In particular, in this work we calculate the interfacial tension for linear and branched surfactants. Deformation Parameter and Taylor plots are obtained for individual surfactant molecules and co-polymers under shear flow.