• DOI:10.1146/ANNUREV.FLUID.30.1.139
• Corpus ID: 13966296

DIFFUSE-INTERFACE METHODS IN FLUID MECHANICS

@article{Anderson1997DIFFUSEINTERFACEMI,
  title={DIFFUSE-INTERFACE METHODS IN FLUID MECHANICS},
  author={Donald M. Anderson and Geoffrey B. McFadden and A. A. Wheeler},
  journal={Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics},
  year={1997},
  volume={30},
  pages={139-165}
}

• D. M. Anderson, G. McFadden, A. A. Wheeler
• Published 1 May 1997
• Computer Science
• Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics

We review the development of diffuse-interface models of hydrodynamics and their application to a wide variety of interfacial phenomena. These models have been applied successfully to situations in which the physical phenomena of interest have a length scale commensurate with the thickness of the interfacial region (e.g. near-critical interfacial phenomena or small-scale flows such as those occurring near contact lines) and fluid flows involving large interface deformations and/or topological changes (e.g. breakup and coalescence events associated with fluid jets, droplets, and large-deformation waves). We discuss the issues involved in formulating diffuse-interface models for single-component and binary fluids. Recent applications and computations using these models are discussed in each case. Further, we address issues including sharp-interface analyses that relate these models to the classical free-boundary problem, computational approaches to describe interfacial phenomena, and models of fully miscible fluids.