Wherever two different materials meet—a water droplet on a window, a lubricant coating a gear, or ice sliding over rock—the behaviour at that boundary can make or break a technology. This project tackles the fundamental physics of such interfaces, where properties change abruptly and unpredictably. Current models struggle with the messy reality of these boundaries: moving contact lines where liquid, solid, and air meet; fluids flowing over rough surfaces; liquids whose viscosity changes with concentration; and the influence of nanoparticles or phase changes. These "complex interfacial phenomena" limit the performance of everything from inkjet printers to oil recovery to ice formation on aircraft wings. The team at Imperial College London will combine mathematical modelling, molecular simulations, and small-scale experiments to build a unified toolkit that can predict how these interfaces behave. If successful, the work could lead to step-change improvements in manufacturing processes, coating technologies, and fluid-handling systems—applications where better control of interfaces directly translates into energy savings, longer-lasting materials, or more reliable performance. The research is fundamental in nature, but the physics it uncovers will underpin practical engineering advances across multiple industries.
View original technical description
The occurrence of interfaces, i.e. material or geometric frontiers between regimes with different physical properties not a priori prescribed, arises in an enormous number of inherently nonlinear problems from fluid-solid mechanics and financial mathematics to materials science and glaciology. The study of interfaces encounters, in addition to the presence of a free boundary, several other challenging aspects and complexities, including a physically proper description of the dynamics of three-phase contact lines, fluid motion over substrates with complex geometry, concentration-dependent physical properties, the presence of nanoparticles and phase transitions. We refer to these as complex interfacial phenomena (CIPh). The proposed research is a synergistic approach combining state-of-the-art modelling, simulations and experimentation to scrutinise a number of open problems and research directions in the area of CIPh. The aim is to rationally understand and systematically predict their physical behaviour and properties. This in turn will allow for step improvements to the performance and efficiency of a host of technologies and applications that rely crucially on CIPh. The theoretical-computational work will be complemented by detailed small-scale experiments that will act so as to verify the efficacy of the developed models, as well as aiding the development of a toolkit for practical applications. The work will be undertaken by a team from the Chemical Engineering and Mathematics Departments at Imperial College London with complementary skills and strengths.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know