Mathematical Biology Seminar
Paul Atzberger
UC Santa Barbara
Friday Feb. 12, 2010
3:05pm in LCB 215 Stochastic Eulerian-Lagrangian
Methods for the Study of Soft Biological Materials.
Abstract:
A modeling and simulation formalism is presented for the study of soft
biological materials. The formalism takes into account microstructure
elasticity, hydrodynamic interactions, and thermal fluctuations. As a
specific motivation we consider lipid bilayer membranes and gel-like
polymeric materials. The approach couples a Lagrangian description of
the microstructures (lipid molecules / polymers) with an Eulerian
description of the hydrodynamics. Thermal fluctuations are
incorporated in the formalism by an appropriate stochastic forcing of
the resulting equations in accordance with the principles of
statistical mechanics. The overall approach extends previous work on
the Stochastic Immersed Boundary Method. Simulation studies are
presenting showing applications of the methodology in the study of
lipid flow in bilayer membranes, the shear viscosity of a gel-like
material,and the diffusivity of particles in soft materials.
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