Homogeneous Nucleation in Inhomogeneous Media II: Nucleation in a Shear Flow

TL;DR

This paper examines how shear flow affects nucleation processes using mesoscopic thermodynamics, deriving a Fokker-Planck equation to understand modifications in nucleation rates in flowing media.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework for nucleation under shear flow, deriving a modified Fokker-Planck equation that accounts for flow effects on cluster dynamics.

Findings

Flow alters the effective diffusion coefficient of clusters.

Shear flow modifies the nucleation rate.

Implications for condensation and polymer crystallization are discussed.

Abstract

We investigate the influence of a shear flow on the process of nucleation. Mesoscopic nonequilibrium thermodynamics is used to derive the Fokker-Planck equation governing the evolution of the cluster size distribution in a metastable phase subjected to a stationary flow. The presence of the flow manifests itself in the expression for the effective diffusion coefficient of a cluster and introduces modifications in the nucleation rate. The implications of these results in condensation and polymer crystallization are discussed.