Breward, C. J. W. and Howell, P. D. (2004) Straining flow of a micellar surfactant solution. European Journal of Applied Mathematics, 15 . pp. 511-531.
We present a mathematical model describing the distribution of monomer and micellar surfactant in a steady straining flow beneath a fixed free surface. The model includes adsorption of monomer surfactant at the surface and a single-step reaction whereby monomer molecules combine to form each micelle. The equations are analysed asymptotically and numerically and the results are compared with experiments.
Previous studies of such systems have often assumed equilibrium between the monomer and micellar phases, i.e. that the reaction rate is effectively infinite. Our analysis shows that such an approach inevitably fails under certain physical conditions and also cannot accurately match some experimental results. Our theory provides an improved fit with experiments and allows the reaction rates to be estimated.
|Uncontrolled Keywords:||fluid mechanics, surfactants, micelles, mathematical modelling, asymptotics|
|Subjects:||D - G > Fluid mechanics|
|Research Groups:||Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics|
|Deposited By:||Chris J.W. Breward|
|Deposited On:||31 Aug 2004|
|Last Modified:||20 Jul 2009 14:18|
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