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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/S35660/01
Title: Efficient and Reliable Computation of Technologically Important Thin Film Flows
Principal Investigator: Barrett, Professor J
Other Investigators:
Matar, Professor OK
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Mathematics
Organisation: Imperial College London
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 01 October 2003 Ends: 31 January 2007 Value (£): 145,290
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Continuum Mechanics Fluid Dynamics
Numerical Analysis
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
The proposed multidisciplinary work will merge effectively the expertise of JWB (mathematician) and OKM (engineer) in the areas of (computational nonlinear PDEs and thin film fluid mechanics, respectively, in order to develop an efficient and reliable numerical scheme to compute the evolutic thin liquid films. Particular attention will be given to such technologically important applications such as coating flows, manipulation of thin liquid on the micro and nano scales in the microelectronic industry, as well as biomedical applications such as surfactant replacement and gene therapies The technique will be able to describe accurately complicated physical phenomena, which accompany the flow of surfactant covered thin films (10( in thickness) such as fingering (which gives rise to highly non-uniform surface coverage) and dewetting on chemically and physically heterogeneous solid substrates. The model consists of a coupled system of degenerate, fourth order and nonlinear, partial differential equations. Local error cot local mesh refinement, adaptive time stepping and stopping criteria will be developed to ensure that the numerical scheme will be totally reliable very accurate. Numerical experiments will then be conducted for a variety of system parameters and the results will be validated against prey numerical and laboratory experiments. The numerical procedure developed can then be used as a reliable research tool to investigate thin film flov a variety of engineering settings.
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Further Information:  
Organisation Website: http://www.imperial.ac.uk