title: Fluctuating hydrodynamics of multispecies nonreactive mixtures.
abstract: In this paper we discuss the formulation of the fluctuating Navier-Stokes equations for multispecies, nonreactive fluids. In particular, we establish a form suitable for numerical solution of the resulting stochastic partial differential equations. An accurate and efficient numerical scheme, based on our previous methods for single species and binary mixtures, is presented and tested at equilibrium as well as for a variety of nonequilibrium problems. These include the study of giant nonequilibrium concentration fluctuations in a ternary mixture in the presence of a diffusion barrier, the triggering of a Rayleigh-Taylor instability by diffusion in a four-species mixture, as well as reverse diffusion in a ternary mixture. Good agreement with theory and experiment demonstrates that the formulation is robust and can serve as a useful tool in the study of thermal fluctuations for multispecies fluids.
authors.affiliation: Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Kaushik
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Balakrishnan
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, San Jose State University, 1 Washington Square, San Jose, California 95192, USA.
authors.forename: Alejandro L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Garcia
authors.affiliation: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, 251 Mercer Street, New York, New York 10012, USA.
authors.forename: Aleksandar
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Donev
authors.affiliation: Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: John B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Bell