Fluid Physics at Meso Scales - Fluid Properties at Nano/Meso Scale: A Numerical Treatment - page 44

Fluid Physics at Meso Scales
Aim. By the end of this chapter, the reader should be aware of and un-
derstand existing simulation techniques and their advantages/disadvantages
when applied to fluid systems at meso scales.
2.1 INTRODUCTION
The focus of this chapter will be to present and discuss methods for combining
information and physics from the continuum and molecular scales. The discussion
begins with methods that couple continuum with molecular simulations. From
this, two basic methods will emerge, where molecular simulations are used either
to couple to the continuum region as a boundary condition (and vice versa) or
by the molecular information being used to modify or enhance the continuum
solution in a particular region.
Many of these methods consider solid systems or sparse gas dynamics, both of
which can access larger length scales with molecular simulation than dense gases
or liquids, due to the dynamics and distance between molecules. Existing meso
scale methods will then be discussed, such as dissipative particle dynamics and
the lattice Boltzmann method. The meso scale methods commonly used present a
'top-down' approach, the benefits of which and applications will be discussed.
The final section will discuss direct schemes from upscaling information from
the 'bottom-up' approach to looking at schemes for extracting bulk properties
from molecular dynamics, with a view to extract not only the properties but also
the property distributions throughout the molecular domain.