Particle Collision And Deposition Phenomena Across Multiple Physical Scales

Abstract

The work of this dissertation investigates particles dynamics at multiple physical scales; from the growth of molecular scale clusters to the transport and deposition of particles in the continuum scale. At the molecular scale, the growth of particles from vapor phase precursors is an important fundamental process for the synthesis of functional nanomaterials. Utilizing molecular dynamics simulation combined with analytical approaches, we demonstrated the effects of several important factors on the growth dynamics, including the potential interaction between growing clusters, latent heat released from vapor to cluster during phase transition (condensation), and the heat transfer with background inert gases. At the continuum scale, the transport and deposition of particles in porous media is a basic phenomenon in particle filtration systems. Of interest in such systems are the system pressure drop and particle collection efficiency. With the assistance of computational fluid dynamics simulations, we developed models which are capable of capturing the time evolution feature of pressure drop and collection efficiency for fibrous media due to the accumulation of particles onto fibers.