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Stephen H. Davis
 Walter P. Murphy Professor
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics

Northwestern University
2145 Sheridan Road, Rm. M440
Evanston, IL 60208-3111, USA

TEL: 847-491-5397
FAX: 847-491-2178

sdavis@northwestern.edu

Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics website

PhD, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Website: www.interfacedynamics.us

Honors and Awards

  • Member, National Academy Of Engineering
  • Member, National Academy Of Sciences
  • Member, American Academy Of Arts & Sciences
  • Fluid Dynamics Prize, American Physical Society 1994
  • G.I. Taylor Medal, Society Of Engineering Science 2001

Research Interests: Fluid Dynamics and Materials Science

Professor Davis works in the area of interfacial dynamics and stability. The interfaces can be in small-scale hydrodynamics in which two immiscible fluids are separated by an interface having surface tension, e.g. thin films, spreading of liquid on solid, and thermocapillary effects. The interfaces can be in systems with phase transformations in which, say, a liquid and its frozen counterpart are separated by a front having surface energy.

The main questions to be answered involve the nonlinear dynamic states of the system, their stability, nonlinear evolution, and pattern selection. Interfacial waves in fluids propagate, steepen, and evolve into three-dimensional complex wave systems, perhaps chaotic. Interfaces in solidification become cellular or dendritic and can lead to oscillatory states. Thin, continuous solid films of semi-conductors formed by vapor deposition can break up into islands as a result of crystal-mismatch stresses.

The means of analyzing such systems involves modelling, asymptotic and numerical methods. The answers have both practical and intrinsic interest.

Editor-In-Chief, Journal Of Fluid Mechanics
General Editor, Cambridge Monographs in Mechanics
Editor, Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics

Selected publications

1997 "Long-scale evolution of thin liquid films," Rev. Mod. Phys. 69, 931 (co-authors A. Oron and S. G. Bankoff).

1998 "Effect of anisotropy on morphological instability in the freezing of a hypercooled melt" Physica D 116, 363 (co-author A. A. Golovin).

1998 "A convective Cahn-Hilliard model for the formation of facets and corners in crystal growth" Physica D 122, 202 (co-authors A. A. Golovin and A. Nepomnyashchy).

2000 "Nonlinear dynamics in horizontal film boiling," Journal of Fluid Mechanics 402,(co-authors C. H. Panzarella, S. G. Bankoff)

2000 "Flow-induced patterns in directional solidification: localized morphologies in three-dimensional flows," Journal of Fluid Mechanics 421, 369-380 (co-author Y.-J. Chen).

2001 "Theory of Solidification," Cambridge, University Press.

2002 "Inertial effects in time-dependent motion of thin films and drops," Journal of Fluid Mechanics 467, 1-17 (co-author L. M. Hocking) .

2003 "Boundary-integral simulations of containerless solidification," Journal of Computational Physics 187, 492 (co-author V.S. Ajaev).