Rheology of Dense Suspensions of Elongated Particles

About the Project

This PhD tackles a fundamental open problem in soft matter physics that sits at the heart of multiple industries and natural systems: the rheology of dense suspensions of elongated particles. Why does a slurry packed with cellulose fibres flow so differently from one packed with spherical particles? What common principles govern the flow and mechanical behaviour of crystal-laden lavas, river logjams, recycled carbon-fibre composites and bacterial suspensions, and how do we develop predictive models useful to real world practitioners? Despite decades of progress on dense suspensions of spheres, culminating in unified flow laws and quantitative theories of jamming, an equivalent description for rod-shaped particles do not yet exist. You will help build it. The project will combine particle-based simulation with continuum modelling to deliver the first physics based constitutive model for dense rod suspensions, resolving how alignment, packing fraction and heterogeneous flow interact to produce stress.

You will work at an active frontier of contemporary soft matter physics, joining a group with a strong international profile and an active track record of publishing in Physical Review Letters, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, and other important journals. The science is genuinely fundamental, but its applications are immediate: your insights will feed directly into our basic understanding of manufacturing process such as speciality chemical crystallisation, composite recycling for the circular economy, and volcanic hazard prediction.

You will become fluent in modern computational soft matter, writing and deploying GPU-based particle simulation codes; utilising Edinburgh's Eddie cluster and ARCHER2; statistical analyses of high-dimensional simulation data; and continuum modelling. You will have the opportunity to write your own codes from scratch and to use standard open source codes such as LAMMPS and OpenFOAM.

You will graduate with a skillset that maps onto careers in academic research, computational materials science, engineering R&D and quantitative industry roles. You will be supported by Dr Chris Ness, Reader in Chemical Engineering, who runs an active group with a strong record of researcher development. You will be embedded in an international collaborator network, will attend major conferences in the field, and will contribute to open-source software releases that the wider community will use.

We are seeking a motivated graduate in physics, applied maths, mechanical or chemical engineering, materials science or a related discipline, with an insatiable curiosity about how things flow. Prior simulation experience is welcome but not required.