Event Details

Micro- to Pico-Scale Energy Transport

Presenter: Vladimir V. Kulish - School of Mechanical and Production Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Supervisor:

Date: Tue, February 26, 2002
Time: 11:00:00 - 12:00:00
Place: EOW 430

ABSTRACT

Abstract:

Classical models of energy transport prove to be not valid below certain scales. This can be caused by two reasons: either due to geometry of the domain where this transport takes place or because the very nature of equations describing these phenomena changes. Non-classical transport phenomena, however, are nowadays very often to be taken into account in many areas of engineering.

The present talk gives several examples of how some problems of energy (heat and mass) transport can be successfully solved on very small scales. The talk thus consists of three parts:

  1. Gas diffusion in the alveolar region of human lungs;
  2. Quantification of odors (mathematical modeling of the human olfactory function);
  3. Heat transfer in thin films.
The first part presents a new model of alveolar gas exchange and describes a new way of determining the effective diffusivity of a multi-component region such as the alveolar region in humans. The results are used to investigate how different distributions of red blood cells in the region affect the lung performance.

The next part of the talk introduces a model suitable for quantification of odors without human experts. This can be achieved by introducing a universal scale for measuring the strength of smells based on the information gain obtained through the olfactory receptor cells.

The last part of the talk is dedicated to analysis of the hyperbolic energy equation. A new method of transforming this equation allows to obtain the relationship between the local temperature and local heat flux. This relationship can be used to predict the time evolution of the surface temperature of thin films subjected to a fast laser heating.