MechE Colloquium: A statistical mesoscale view of phase change
Event details
| Date | 11.11.2025 |
| Hour | 12:00 › 13:00 |
| Speaker | Prof. Mirko Gallo, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract: Phase change in fluids is inherently multiscale: molecular thermal fluctuations seed embryos of a new phase, and only rare, critical nuclei trigger the transition (boiling, cavitation, condensation). Classical approaches split the problem—molecular dynamics for nucleation, continuum equations for flow—so a unified picture is hard to obtain. In this talk, I present a mesoscale stochastic framework based on fluctuating hydrodynamics that captures both the stochastic onset of nucleation and the subsequent hydrodynamic evolution of bubbles and droplets, including wave emission and inertial effects.
To bridge the vast time-scale gap that defeats brute-force simulation, we embed this framework in an efficient rare-event strategy: large-deviation theory applied to fluctuating hydrodynamics computes the most-probable nucleation pathways and rates far from equilibrium, turning a waiting-time problem into a variational one. The result is a predictive, experiment-facing view of incipient phase change in real fluids, with quantitative outputs such as threshold conditions (temperature, pressure, supersaturation), nucleation rates, growth kinetics, and hydrodynamic signals (e.g., acoustics) — a practical route to prediction and control across applications.
Biography: As of 2025, Mirko Gallo is an Associate Professor of Fluid Mechanics in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Sapienza University of Rome and a Fellow of the Sapienza School of Advanced Studies. His research focuses on mesoscale modelling of fluids within a multidisciplinary framework that integrates fluid mechanics, statistical mechanics, applied mathematics, high-performance computing, and soft-matter physics, enabling multiscale investigations of complex fluids and flows. He received the AIMETA Junior Prize for Fluid Mechanics in 2022 and was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2024.
To bridge the vast time-scale gap that defeats brute-force simulation, we embed this framework in an efficient rare-event strategy: large-deviation theory applied to fluctuating hydrodynamics computes the most-probable nucleation pathways and rates far from equilibrium, turning a waiting-time problem into a variational one. The result is a predictive, experiment-facing view of incipient phase change in real fluids, with quantitative outputs such as threshold conditions (temperature, pressure, supersaturation), nucleation rates, growth kinetics, and hydrodynamic signals (e.g., acoustics) — a practical route to prediction and control across applications.
Biography: As of 2025, Mirko Gallo is an Associate Professor of Fluid Mechanics in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Sapienza University of Rome and a Fellow of the Sapienza School of Advanced Studies. His research focuses on mesoscale modelling of fluids within a multidisciplinary framework that integrates fluid mechanics, statistical mechanics, applied mathematics, high-performance computing, and soft-matter physics, enabling multiscale investigations of complex fluids and flows. He received the AIMETA Junior Prize for Fluid Mechanics in 2022 and was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2024.
Practical information
- General public
- Free