Introduction

The success of the series of International Conferences on Multiphase Flow (Orlando, Florida 2001; Santa Fe, New Mexico 2003; Portland, Maine 2005; Bologna, 2007; New Forest, UK 2009 and Kos, Greece in 2011) has led to the meeting being reconvened in 2013.

The overall focus of this conference series is the combination of experimental and computational techniques to gain a better understanding of all classes of multiphase and complex flow. The goal of the meeting is to facilitate the exchange of ideas and experiences directly and interactively, thereby promoting the development of knowledge in this increasingly important topic.

The study of multiphase and complex flow is ever expanding in scope, primarily because of the increasing importance that these flows have in manufacturing, mineral extraction, environmental remediation, and medicine to name a few, and because of the technological advances that are constantly occurring. Despite experimental, theoretical and computational efforts that have spanned decades, we are still far from a full understanding of the complex behaviours inherent in multiphase flows. There are several causes of the difficulty in formulating accurate models even for the simplest of systems. The introduction of phenomena occurring at several different length scales, which in general can not be decoupled from each other, is the primary difficulty. At the smallest – nano - scales, processes occur which are neither continuum nor molecular, and therefore can not be treated either at the molecular level – the problem being too big – or at the continuum level – the model may miss important non-continuum effects. Examples of such situations are interface phenomena at engineered interfaces, which involve both a vapour and a liquid phase, or surface-to-surface interaction via an intervening fluid. One length scale up – micro – structure formation can cause difficulties in formulating boundary conditions and constitutive equations.

This conference aims to bring together modellers, computational scientists and experimentalists to share experiences, successes, new methodologies and in general to promote the advancement of this important area of fluid mechanics.