Toward A Molecular Scale Understanding of Frost Heaving: Phase 1

Abstract

A fundamental understanding of the physical and chemical basis for frost heaving is of utmost importance for improving the design of structures for use in cold regions The research reported here represents a multidisciplinary effort to develop a molecular-scale understanding of this cold region phenomena. Propagation of the molecular-scale information to a field scale is also important and the scale-up problem has also been addressed. A multiphase, multicomponent hybrid theory of mixtures approach was used to scale up information. Equilibrium and nonequilibrium statistical mechanical tools were developed and employed to examine nonlocal diffusion and dispersion. Phase transition were studied with MC and MD methods. New techniques were developed to compute the chemical potential of the vicinal phase. Interfacial tension was studied using GCEMC. Anomalous diffusion in monolayer films was analyzed via MD, scaling arguments and fractal Brown motion.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 13, 1993
Accession Number
ADA275446

Entities

People

  • John H. Cushman

Organizations

  • Purdue Research Foundation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Cold Regions
  • Diffusion
  • Dispersions
  • Equations
  • Equations Of State
  • Films
  • Materials
  • Molecular Dynamics
  • Molecular Electronics
  • Monomolecular Films
  • Monte Carlo Method
  • Phase Transformations
  • Regions
  • Scientists
  • Statistical Mechanics
  • Surface Tension
  • Thermodynamics

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Combustion science or combustion engineering.
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Geotechnical Engineering.