Heat and Mass Transfer and Interface Behavior of Fluid

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue provides a platform for communicating the heat and mass transfer and interface behavior of fluid. We encourage the authors to explore new methods to study instabilities, nonlinearity, and turbulence from the perspective of the theory of entropy and complex systems.

The heat and mass transfer and the interface behavior of fluid present a complex nonlinear scientific problem. On one hand, the flow-induced increase in the system's entropy plays a crucial role in enhancing the efficiency of fluid mixing and interface heat and mass transfer. In multiphase systems such as bubbles, droplets, and colloids, the entropy of the discrete phases and their behaviors, including migration, collision, coalescence, and splitting, are also worth in-depth exploration. These behaviors are closely intertwined with the entropy changes within the system, affecting the overall thermodynamic state and the efficiency of heat and mass transfer processes.

On the other hand, the heat and mass transfer and interface behavior are not monotonous processes; instead, they involve fascinating evolutions of flow patterns. The coupled effects, such as heat conduction, concentration diffusion, convective transport, interface dynamics, phase change, and the Marangoni effect, give rise to plenty of instabilities and transitions. Convective instabilities and interface instabilities can trigger periodic temporal evolutions or the pattern formation of ordered spatial structures. From the perspective of complex systems, these are self-organizing phenomena. A plethora of fluid phenomena fall under this category, including but not limited to Rayleigh–Bénard convection, Marangoni convection, double diffusive convection, the Karman vortex street, the transition of the flat-plate boundary layer, Kelvin–Helmholtz instability, Rayleigh–Taylor instability, the coffee-ring problem, and the Belousov–Zhabotinskii oscillatory reaction.

The existence of self-organization implies that within fluid dynamics, there are mechanisms that resist entropy increase. By integrating concepts like entropy, the Lyapunov exponent, and the fractal dimension from nonlinear theory, the development of ordered and coherent structures can be better characterized and predicted. In many studies on heat and mass transfer and interfacial behavior, periodic orbits, period-doubling bifurcations, tangent bifurcations, and the RTN route to chaos have been identified, which provides a new perspective for understanding turbulence.

It is worth highlighting that in recent years, data-driven and machine learning technologies have been introduced into fluid dynamics. The collision between reduced-order models for fluids and the theory of complex dynamic systems is anticipated to spark new breakthroughs in future research.

This Special Issue serves as a platform for the exchange of ideas regarding the heat and mass transfer and interface behavior of fluid. We encourage authors to explore novel methodologies for investigating instabilities, nonlinearity, and turbulence from the vantage points of entropy theory and complex systems theory.

Prof. Dr. Li Duan
Dr. Di Wu
Dr. Jia Wang
Guest Editors

Dr. Zhijun Ye
Guest Editor Assistant

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