Dynamic regimes of fluids simulated by multiparticlecollision dynamics.pdfVIP

Dynamic regimes of fluids simulated by multiparticle-collision dynamics M. Ripoll, K. Mussawisade, R. G. Winkler, and G. Gompper Institut f¨ur Festk¨orperforschung, Forschungszentrum Julich,¨ D-52425 J¨ulich, Germany (Dated: 2nd February 2008) We investigate the hydrodynamic properties of a fluid simulated with a mesoscopic solvent model. Two distinct regimes are identified, the “particle regime” in which the dynamics is gas-like, and the 5 “collective regime” where the dynamics is fluid-like. This behavior can be characterized by the 0 Schmidt number, which measures the ratio between viscous and diffusive transport. Analytical 0 expressions for the tracer diffusion coefficient, which have been derived on the basis of a molecular- 2 chaos assumption, are found to describe the simulation data very well in the particle regime, but important deviations are found in the collective regime. These deviations are due to hydrodynamic n u correlations. The model is then extended in order to investigate self-diffusion in colloidal dispersions. J We study first the transport properties of heavy point-like particles in the mesoscopic solvent, as a function of their mass and number density. Second, we introduce excluded-volume interactions 0 among the colloidal particles and determine the dependence of the diffusion coefficient on the col- 2 loidal volume fraction for different solvent mean-free paths. In the collective regime, the results are ] found to be in