Emergence of foams from the breakdown of the phase field crystal model

Abstract

The phase field crystal (PFC) model captures the elastic and topological properties of crystals with a single scalar field at small undercooling. At large undercooling, new foam-like behavior emerges. We characterize this foam phase of the PFC equation and propose a modified PFC equation that may be used for the simulation of foam dynamics. This minimal model reproduces von Neumann's rule for two-dimensional dry foams, and Lifshitz-Slyozov coarsening for wet foams. We also measure the coordination number distribution and find that its second moment is larger than previously-reported experimental and theoretical studies of soap froths, a finding that we attribute to the wetness of the foam increasing with time.

arXiv comment4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Modeling Elastic and Plastic Deformations in Non-Equilibrium Processing Using Phase Field Crystals
• Phase-field crystal study of grain-boundary premelting
• Renormalization group approach to multiscale simulation of polycrystalline materials using the phase field crystal model
• The Suprafroth (Superconducting Froth)

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Phase-field-crystal models for condensed matter dynamics on atomic length and diffusive time scales: an overview
• Pollen Patterns Form from Modulated Phases
• An energy-stable convex splitting for the phase-field crystal equation
• Linear Second Order Energy Stable Schemes of Phase Field Model with Nonlocal Constraints for Crystal Growth