Research Interests for Michael B. Gratton
Research Interests: Dewetting and coarsening of thin fluid films
Liquid films will "bead" into droplets when spread thin over a surface. The beading (dewetting) depends on the liquid and the surface, and will often leave the drops connected by a nanometers-thick adsorbed layer of fluid.
I study the interactions of these connected drops, specifically the slow dynamics that cause these drops to aggregate into fewer, larger drops. I use numerical simulation of a dynamical system derived from the lubrication equation, Liftshitz-Slyozov-Wagner style distribution equation models, and direct simulation of the PDE to study the phenomena. - Keywords:
- fluid films, coarsening, dynamical systems, mathematical modeling
- Current projects:
- Coarsening thin films
- Distribution models for coarsening systems
- Dewetting instabilities in thin films
- Areas of Interest:
- Thin Fluid Films
Surfactants
Coarsening
Dynamical Systems
Mathematical Modeling
- Recent Publications
- M.B. Gratton and T.P. Witelski, Coarsening of dewetting thin films subject to gravity,
Phys. Rev. E., vol. 77
(January, 2008),
pp. 016301
- M.B. Gratton et. al., Backward Diffusion methods for digital halftoning,
in Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Workshop on Mathematical Problems in Industry
(June, 2006),
pp. 1 -- 15
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Mathematics Department