This meeting brought together leading international experts in thin-film flow from across several different traditional academic disciplines, including mathematics, engineering, physics and chemistry, to report on their latest discoveries and to foster new inter-disciplinary collaborations. Such a genuine mixing of scientists with common interests from different specialities is rare and was the most likely way to spark genuinely new and exciting research.
This meeting built on the great success of the 1999 ICMS meeting “The Dynamics of Thin Fluid Films” organised by Wilson, Duffy and Michael Grinfeld from the University of Strathclyde.
The workshop covered the latest developments in thin-film flow including (but not limited to) the rapidly growing fields of foam dynamics, micro-fluidics and nano-technology, as well as the latest experimental and numerical techniques and asymptotic analysis, all of which are able to cast new light on the subtle interplay between competing physical effects in thin-film flows.
Specific topics:
- The analysis of evaporating layers and droplets
- The complex structure and dynamics of surfactant-laden flows, the coarsening dynamics of droplets, thin-film flow of visco-plastic and visco-elastic fluids (including exciting developments on cooling lava flows), the propagation of thin fluid-filled cracks
- Thin-film modelling of the Arctic ice sheet and shelf (including its breakup), and numerous new and exciting biological and medical applications (including wound healing, biofilm formation and growth
- The dynamics of fluid linings, and several aspects of cell motion
There were two main objectives:
- To raise awareness within industry of how ICMS can help companies access and commercially exploit academic research and expertise in mathematics and computing
- To understand how companies working in the area of thin films use mathematics and computing in their businesses and to identify potential areas of collaboration on new and industrially motivated problems
