Semester 2, Week 5: Prof Eugene Benilov, University of Limerick

Academic webpage

Title: Phase transitions from the viewpoint of an applied mathematician

Abstract:

Evaporation, supercooling, and related phenomena can be described using hydrodynamic, kinetic, or mixed models – which yield results differing by up to two orders of magnitude.  Furthermore, these theoretical predictions disagree with at least some experimental results, which themselves are not mutually consistent: reported evaporation rates of the same liquid at the same temperature differ just as much as their theoretical counterparts.

In this talk, I explain the origin of the discrepancies in the experimental data and argue that the only reliable theoretical description is provided by the Enskog–Vlasov kinetic equation.

Location: Maths Lecture Theatre B