PhD Suspensions of sponge-like particles: Modeling their mechanical properties

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label Burse autorenew 2025-09-29, 17:00 history_edu Diana Ignat
The PhD position is available in the Polymer Technology group lead by Prof.dr.ir. H.E.H. Meijer. The candidate will be supervised by dr. Markus Htter, and also collaborate closely with the other participants in the project, particularly with dr. Hans Wyss (same group) and the company Friesland Campina (The Netherlands).

Section description

The research of the Polymer Technology group, headed by Prof.dr.ir. H. E. H. Meijer, is aimed at bridging the gap between science and technology in the area of polymer processing and design, through the use of experimental and computational tools in the modeling of the full thermo-mechanical history of material (elements) during their formation, processing and final design, to quantitatively predict properties of processed objects.

Project description



The main focus of this project is on the rheology of dense suspensions of sponge-like particles (e.g., casein micelles; starch particles; microgel particles). These particles have properties that lie in between those of hard colloidal particles and those of soft polymers. Moreover, the interactions between the sponge-like particles are rate-dependent, because the viscous solvent can be expelled from or pushed into the (porous) particles. Understanding the structure-property relations for materials built from these particles has important implications for example in the food and cosmetics industries.

Aim of the PhD project, tasks

The main goal is to formulate a multiscale model for relating the macroscopic mechanical behavior of sponge-like particle suspensions to the particle arrangement and their sizes in dynamic situations. This encompasses extending usual Brownian Dynamics schemes to account for the sponginess of the particles, and to simulate the behavior of such suspensions in quiescent conditions and flow situations.

In order to formulate a constitutive relation for the macroscopic stress in terms of the microstructure, nonequilibrium thermodynamics (GENERIC framework) shall be used. So doing, the mutual coupling of the mesostructure and the macroscopic behavior shall be implemented consistently.

The physical laws for the single-particle behavior are based on experimental data (parallel PhD project with dr. Hans Wyss). The resulting simulation results will be confronted with experimental data on the rheology, and thereby iteratively improved, to ensure relevance to real applications.