Direct numerical simulation of the Brownian motion of particles by using fluctuating hydrodynamic equations

Nitin Sharma, Neelesh A. Patankar*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

96 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, we present a direct numerical simulation scheme for the Brownian motion of particles. In this approach, the thermal fluctuations are included in the fluid equations via random stress terms. Solving the fluctuating hydrodynamic equations coupled with the particle equations of motion result in the Brownian motion of the particles. There is no need to add a random force term in the particle equations. The particles acquire random motion through the hydrodynamic force acting on its surface from the surrounding fluctuating fluid. The random stress in the fluid equations are easy to calculate unlike the random terms in the conventional Brownian dynamics type approaches. We present a three-dimensional implementation along with validation.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)466-486
Number of pages21
JournalJournal of Computational Physics
Volume201
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 10 2004

Keywords

  • Brownian motion
  • Control volume method
  • Direct numerical simulation
  • Distributed Lagrange multiplier method
  • Fluctuating hydrodynamics
  • Mesoscopic scale
  • Micro/nanoscale computational fluid dynamics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Numerical Analysis
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)
  • General Physics and Astronomy
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Computational Mathematics
  • Applied Mathematics

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