Ran Holtzman

My research is focused on out-of-equilibrium multiphase and reactive transport in porous and granular materials, where multiple fluid and solid phases interact to produce intricate spatiotemporal patterns, path-dependency (hysteresis) and rate-dependency. I seek fundamental understanding of the collective, nonlinear effect of coupled mechanisms on the overall response at larger scales, with special emphasis on the pore-scale origins of the emergence of unstable preferential pathways and their interplay with hydrodynamics, chemical reactions, mechanical damage altering the material properties.

To that end, I formulate physically-based models, combining elegant, innovative model systems (simplified analogs) synergistically with experiments that both guide the theory (by exposing the essential mechanisms) as well as validate it. The models are used in detailed systematic numerical simulations and solved analytically (for simple cases allowing that), to develop theoretical understanding of the underlying physics, e.g. via scaling analysis and predictive phase diagrams of the various regimes.