Dr Shixin Xu, Assistant Professor for Mathematics from Duke Kunshan University was invited to give a guest lecture on 23 September 2019. The topic of Dr Xu’s lecture was 'Mathematical Models for Complex Fluids by Using Energy Variational Method'.

Dr Xu Shixin giving a guest lecture

Dr Xu got his PhD in Mathematics in 2013 from the University of Science and Technology located in China and his research interests are machine learning and data-driven model for diseases, multiscale modeling of complex fluids, homogenization theory and numerical analysis.

The Dean of DST Prof Huang Huaxiong welcomed and introduced Dr Xu at the start of the lecture.

Prof Huang introducing Dr Xu

For this topic, Dr Xu explained that complex fluids are those with internal microstructures whose evolution affects the macroscopic dynamics of the material, especially the rheology. Therefore it is a multiscale and multicomponent problem. Those internal microstructures interactions will induce some non-Newtonian mechanical properties, for example, viscoelasticity and strain stiffening. A lot of models have been proposed to model different types of complex fluids.

In this lecture, Dr Xu presented the energetic variational approach by which the model is always thermal dynamic consistent. He also discussed about applications of energetic variation method on different scales of complex fluids.

Reporter: Samuel Burgess
Photographer: Lauren Richardson, Ben Wen
Editors: Deen He, Lauren Richardson
(from MPRO)