Since Mr.Tsien brought up his idea of physical mechanics,as a new field in engineering science,to public attention in the early 50's of the 20th century,innumerable application examples of physical mechanics approach in diverse fields have manifested its strong vitality increasingly.One of important aspects in applications of physical mechanics is to appropriately choose the microscopic quantity for the system in consideration and build a bridge to connect its relevant microscopic information to its desired macroscopic properties.We present two unique cases of using the physical mechanics approach to study colloidal stability.In the first case we measured the outcomes from artificially induced collisions at individual particle levels,by means of directly observing artificially induced collisions with the aid of optical tweezers.In the second case,by using T-matrix method,the microscopic quantity extinction cross section of the doublet can be accurately evaluated and therefore the measurement range and accuracy of the turbidity methodology for determining the CRC are greatly improved.
Simultaneous orthokinetic and perikinetic coagulations(SOPCs) are studied for small and large Peclet numbers(P e) using Brownian dynamics simulation.The results demonstrate that the contributions of the Brownian motion and the shear flow to the overall coagulation rate are basically not additive.At the early stages of coagulation with small Peclet numbers,the ratio of overall coagulation rate to the rate of pure perikinetic coagulation is proportional to P 1/2 e,while with high Peclet numbers,the ratio of overall coagulation rate to the rate of pure orthokinetic coagulation is proportional to P 1/2 e.Moreover,our results show that the aggregation rate generally changes with time for the SOPC,which is different from that for pure perikinetic and pure orthokinetic coagulations.By comparing the SOPC with pure perikinetic and pure orthokinetic coagulations,we show that the redistribution of particles due to Brownian motion can play a very important role in the SOPC.In addition,the effects of redistribution in the directions perpendicular and parallel to the shear flow direction are different.This perspective explains the behavior of coagulation due to the joint effects of the Brownian motion(perikinetic) and the fluid motion(orthokinetic).
The gas-liquid phase coexistence in a two-dimensional Lennard-Jones system is investigated using Maxwell construction method together with molecular dynamics simulations.The results of phase coexistence in different truncations of the potential are compared with data obtained from the literature,and the corresponding critical properties calculated.The crossover from Ising-like to mean field behavior is observed and confirmed as the temperature approaches the critical point from below.Performing simulations on systems with different sizes,we find that a finite size effect is more significant than those shown in most of the previous results,and a lower critical temperature is obtained when the full extent of this finite size effect is considered.
Colloid-colloid interactions in charge-stabilized dispersions can to some extent be represented by the hard-core Yukawa model. The crystallization process and polymorph selection of hard-core Yukawa model are studied by means of smart Monte Carlo simulations in the region of face-centered-cubic(fcc) phase. The contact value of hard-core Yukawa potential and the volume fraction of the colloids are fixed, while the Debye screening length can be varied. In the early stage of the crystallization, the precursors with relatively ordered liquid structure have been observed. Although the crystal structure of thermodynamically stable phase is fcc, the system crystallizes into a mixture of fcc and hexagonal close-packed(hcp) structures under small Debye screening length since the colloidal particles act as effective hard spheres. In the intermediate range of Debye screening length, the system crystallizes into a mixture of fcc, hcp, and body-centered-cubic(bcc). The existence of metastable hcp and bcc structures can be interpreted as a manifestation of the Ostwald's step rule. Until the Debye screening length is large enough, the crystal structure obtained is almost a complete fcc suggesting the system eventually reaches to a thermodynamically stable state.
