ISR-Research Associate - Computational PDRA

Job title:                   PDRA Research Associate in Computational Rheology

Annual Salary:          Equivalent to US$34,000 – US$46,000 (or ￡28,000 - ￡37,000) dependent on relevant research experience

Start/duration:         Tenable from 1^stDecember 2017 for up to three years

Probation period:    6 months

Based at:                  Institute for Systems Rheology (ISR), the Advanced Institute of Engineering Science for Intelligent Manufacturing, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, P. R. China

Responsible to:       Professor Xue-Feng Yuan at Guangzhou University and Professor Gerry Fuller at Stanford University

Project Description

The stability of emulsions and foams impacts a wide range of problems in human health and chemical product design. The research will investigate the physical mechanisms controlling film drainage and the ultimate coalescence of drops and bubbles in the presence of rheologically complex fluid-fluid interfaces. This effort will combine experimental observation with computer simulation to elucidate the role of adsorbed amphiphiles and particles in controlling coalescence dynamics. The computational work will utilize a multiple scale simulation platform integrated with finite volume, lattice Boltzmann, immersed boundary and molecular dynamics techniques on “Tianhe-2” supercomputer for modelling the thin film drainage as droplets and bubbles approach on another measured by “dynamic fluid film interferometer” (DFI). Interfacial shear and dilatational rheology will be utilized to extract the constitutive relationship of the complex thin films.

Specific applications can be selected from a range of problems that include oil recovery, food processing, protein stability, and biofilm/cellular interactions. The selection would be determined through communication with applicants.

Key Responsibilities

A successful candidate will conduct the computational part of the project with specific tasks including: 1) to formulate suitable constitutive model for extracting the material functions of the thin film from the rheometric characterizations; 2) to develop a micro- and macro-coupling computational platform for modeling nonlinear dynamics of the thin film and to validate the model against experimental data from DFI; 3) work with experimental PDRA on construction of a common web-database to integrate multiple scale experimental and computational data for correlation analysis of the structure-property-composition relationships of adsorbed amphiphiles and particles under equilibrium and flow conditions.

A successful candidate should have a PhD or equivalent in computational rheology/fluid dynamics or computational physics. In-depth knowledge in soft matter physics, rheology of complex fluids, constitutive modeling and computational fluid dynamics, C++ programming are essential. Experience in the lattice Boltzmann method and extra-large scale parallel computing are advantageous. You should be capable of working under your own initiative and with a multidisciplinary research team, of presenting your work to our industrial partners and at international conferences, so excellent communication and organizational skills are also required.

Informal enquiries may be made to Prof Xue-Feng Yuan (email: xue-feng.yuan@gzhu.edu.cn) or Professor Gerry Fuller (email: ggf@stanford.edu).

Closing date:  30 June 2018