Transport Phenomena
Modern problems in transport phenomena are inherently complex, spanning several size scales and often involving the interplay of the motion of material or energy with multiple dissolved or dispersed components. Our faculty tackle transport problems in the agricultural, biomedical, chemical, food, personal care, petroleum, and energy industries. In view of the growing technological emphasis on small-scale systems, these efforts frequently bring together traditional aspects of transport phenomena with the dynamics of suspended particles, droplets, colloids, vesicles, biological cells, or macromolecules. Our transport faculty participate in graduate groups in applied mathematics, biophysics, food science, and biomedical engineering, and often employ interdisciplinary approaches in their research. Recent efforts in UC Davis Chemical Engineering include predictive discrete element modeling of the packing and flow of granular materials (Curtis); transport, adsorption, and rheology of surfactants in foods, foams, and biological membranes (Dungan, Longo, Manikantan, Phillips); dopant transport in polymer semiconductors (Moule); charge transport and nonlinear electrokinetic flows (Miller, Ristenpart); complex rheology, viscoelasticity, and constitutive modeling of multiphase fluids (Manikantan, Miller, Powell, Phillips); turbulent dispersion of pathogens (Ristenpart); droplet and vesicle manipulation in microfluidics (Ristenpart, Wan); and cerebrovascular circulation (Wan).
