Associate Professor Cari Dutcher

This group studies different chemical and physical phenomena in multiphase systems, including surfactant transport and droplet coalescence. For the former, they use macroscale and microscale methods to measure surface/interfacial tension of bubbles/droplets in surrounding liquid. Then, an implicit numerical integration is applied to fit surfactant properties. For the coalescence, the researchers are building mathematical models to predict the thin film drainage dynamics of neighboring droplets. Since this work deals with transient problems, the computing power at MSI is necessary, with MSI resources largely facilitating multiphase-system research from surfactant transport to droplet coalescence.