In this thesis, we investigate phase behaviors and wetting phenomena in complex fluids. The complex fluid under consideration is a ternary mixture of two immiscible fluids (oil and water) plus a concentration of surfactants. The model used is based on a Ginzburg-Landau functional due to Laradji et al. which is written in terms of an order parameter representing the difference between the local densities of oil and water and a scalar field representing the local concentration of surfactants. A mean field phase diagram for the homogeneous phases was first obtained in terms of the surfactant chemical potential, mu using exact mean field equations. A tricritical point followed by a triple line between an oil/water coexistence region and a disordered phase was established from these equations. Following Laradji et al., the Langevin equations were derived in the presence of a new term in the free energy functional which stabilizes the system at long wavelengths. Once the phase diagram was established, we examined the equilibrium wetting of a water/oil interface by the complex fluid and we calculated the related contact angle, theta, along the triple line as a function of increasing mu. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.30706 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Monast, Patrick. |
| Contributors | Zuckermann, Martin J. (advisor), Guo, Hang (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Physics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001746288, proquestno: MQ64410, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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