Molecular Dynamics Simulation of the Development of Hydrodynamic Instability from the Nanoscale to the Microscale

R.E. Rudd, W.H. Cabot, K.J. Caspersen, J.N. Glosli, D.F. Richards, F.H. Streitz
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, US

Keywords: nanofluidics, Kelvin-Helmholtz, mixing

Abstract:

We have simulated the mixing in a shear layer due to the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability using molecular dynamics. In order to reach micron-sized simulations, we have simulated a total of 9 billion atoms on a 212,000 CPU supercomputer. We have analyzed the growth of the mixing layer and compared the results to conventional Navier-Stokes simulation of the mixing process.