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Recent progress in the concurrent atomistic-continuum method and its application in phonon transport

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Abstract

This work presents the recent progress in the development of the concurrent atomistic-continuum (CAC) method for coarse-grained space- and time-resolved atomistic simulations of phonon transport. Application examples, including heat pulses propagating across grain boundaries and phase interfaces, as well as the interactions between phonons and moving dislocations, are provided to demonstrate the capabilities of CAC. The simulation results provide visual evidence and reveal the underlying physics of a variety of phenomena, including phonon focusing, wave interference, dislocation drag, interfacial Kapitza resistance caused by quasi-ballistic phonon transport, etc. A new method to quantify fluxes in transient transport processes is also introduced.

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Acknowledgments

This material is based upon research supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under Award #DE-SC0006539.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, 32611, USA

    Xiang Chen, Weixuan Li, Adrian Diaz, Yang Li & Youping Chen

  2. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, 30332, USA

    David L. McDowell

  3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, 30332, USA

    David L. McDowell

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  1. Xiang Chen
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Correspondence to Xiang Chen.

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Chen, X., Li, W., Diaz, A. et al. Recent progress in the concurrent atomistic-continuum method and its application in phonon transport. MRS Communications 7, 785–797 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2017.116

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