In his celebrated paper on the reciprocal relation (Phys. Rev. 37, 405, 1931), Onsager extended Rayleigh’s principle of the least energy dissipation to general irreversible processes. In this talk, I will give a brief introduction to this variational principle, which provides a convenient framework for deriving dynamical equations of non-equilibrium phenomena in soft matter. Three examples will be discussed: (1) capillary filling in a tube. (2) stratification of binary colloidal solution under evaporation. (3) beads-on-string structure formation of viscoelastic filaments. I hope to show that Onsager variational principle can be regarded as a solid general basis for the dynamics of soft matter systems.
 

Jiajia Zhou received his BSc in physics from Peking University in 2002. He then went to McMaster University in Canada and obtained his PhD in physics in 2010, under the supervision of Prof. An-Chang Shi. He was a postdoctoral researcher from 2011 to 2015 at University Mainz in Germany with Prof. Friederike Schmid. He joined Beihang University as an Associate Professor in 2015, and moved to SCUT in 2021. His research focuses on theoretical modelling and computer simulation of soft matter.   

Please contact phweb@ust.hk should you have questions about the talk.