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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/M29696/01
Title: PHASE EQUILIBRIA AND KINETICS OF POLYDISPERSE SYSTEMS
Principal Investigator: Cates, Professor M
Other Investigators:
McLeish, Professor T Evans, Dr RML
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Sch of Physics and Astronomy
Organisation: University of Edinburgh
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 10 January 1999 Ends: 09 April 2002 Value (£): 135,443
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Complex fluids & soft solids
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
The statistical mechanics of polydispersity is of relevance to most complex fluids. For instance colloidal or polmeric systems contain particles which are almost inevitably not identical, but have a distribution of some property such as size or charge. We aim to develop well-founded, fundamental theories of the statistical mechanics of such systems. Such theoretical frameworks have heretofore been cumbersome or arbitrary, and poorly understood due to their intrinsic mathematical complexity. We shall develop two new approaches: the perturbativeand projection methods, which are promising due to their relatively simple structures. We shall further develop these methods in the field of phase equillibria, and extend them to cover equilibrium phase interfaces and phase-ordering kinetics. We shall use them to make verifiable predictions in each of those areas for specific systems. Where appropriate, numerical solutions will be performed on full non-linear integral equations for comparison with those predictions. Results will also be compared with experimental data.
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