Journal: Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing, printed version and online version

http://www.techscience.com/fdmp/

The Journal is intended to cover some "frontier" aspects of materials science and, in particular, the most modern and advanced processes for the production of inorganic (semiconductors and metal alloys), organic (protein crystals) materials and "living" (in vitro) biological tissues, with emphasis on the fluid-dynamic conditions under which they are operated. The Journal focuses on the final properties of these materials as well as on fluid-mechanical aspects pertaining to the technological processes used to grow them.

Topics:

The scope of the Journal is covered by these topics (which could be updated): interplay between fluid motion and materials preparation processes (by means of: experimental investigation; computer modeling & simulation; novel numerical techniques and multiprocessor computations); multi-phase and multi-component systems; pattern formation; multi-scale modeling; interface-tracking methods (e.g., VOF, level-set) and moving boundaries; solidification; semiconductor crystals; metallurgy; dynamics of dispersed particles, bubbles and droplets (sedimentation, Marangoni migration, coalescence mechanisms, interaction with advancing fronts, etc.); dynamics and static behavior of fluid surfaces and interfaces; gravitational convection; surface-tension-driven convection; vibrational and magnetic convection; instability and bifurcation in fluid mechanics; flow stability and transition to chaos; flow control methods; macromolecular (protein) crystallization (nucleation mechanisms, morphology, surface growth kinetics and related interplay with the fluid-dynamics of the growth reactors); tissue engineering (physicochemical factors affecting the growth kinetics of biological tissues in standard bioreactors, trajectory analysis; shape evolution, effect of fluid-dynamic shear forces, design of new growth reactors).

Aims and Scope:

In practice, the Journal is conceived to demonstrate the relevance of fluid-dynamic analysis to materials science for a broad variety of situations and fields. Despite the very different genesis (inorganic, organic, biological, etc.), the presence of a fluid phase that feeds the growing specimen is a common feature of the subjects illustrated above. Adequate thermal and/or chemical stimuli have to be provided to drive the fluid phase out of equilibrium and to sustain the process. Therefore, the fluid phase is in nonuniform conditions: compositional and/or thermal gradients are present and correspondingly mass and/or heat transport can take place. A common feature is also the presence of "interfaces" (solid/melt, liquid/air, protein crystal/mother liquor, living tissue/culture medium) that can affect with their own characteristics (surface tension, surface chemical kinetics of growth, velocity and morphological evolution of the advancing fronts) the phenomena. Of course an important part of the Journal subject coverage is devoted to computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This branch of fluid dynamics complements experimental and theoretical work by providing an alternative cost-effective means of simulating real processes.