Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Almost all models for complex fluids can be fitted into the energetic variational framework. The advantage of the approach is the revealing/focus of the competition between the kinetic energy and the internal "elastic" energies. In this talk, I will discuss two very different engineering problems: free interface motion in Newtonian fluids and viscoelastic materials. We will illustrate the underlying connections between the problems and their distinct properties. Moreover, I will present the analytical results concerning the existence of near equilibrium solutions of these problems.