Computational fluid dynamics has been increasingly adopted as a promising tool to understand the essential dynamics of particulate flow. The present review gives a brief description of numerical methods to describe the boundary condition of moving solid surface at lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), including bounce-back (BB) method (and improved BB method), immersed boundary (IB) method, and smoothed profile (SP) method. It is essential to choose an appropriate numerical method according to the target system. Among these methods, the author and coworkers have used the SP method to efficiently simulate flows including a number of particles. Here, typical results obtained by the SP-LBM simulations are presented.

Preparation of boehmite-silica composite particles using heterocoagulation was studied to improve the packing ratio and flowability of the particles used as fillers and flame retardants in resins. By measuring the zeta potential of each particle, silica showed a negative charge at pH > 2, and boehmite showed a positive charge at pH < 9. Therefore, mixing of each suspension of silica and boehmite prepared at pH 4 successfully produced boehmite-silica composite particles by heterocoagulation. We used two different silica particle sizes. Using smaller silica particles, composite particles uniformly coated with silica were obtained. The composite particles showed excellent fluidity in liquid paraffin, which suggested improved packing ratio.

Magnetorheological Fluids (MRF) whose apparent viscosity is controllable by applying magnetic fields are known as a kind of functional fluids. It is generally considered that such viscosity changes are caused by the formation of chain-like clusters of magnetic particles dispersed in the fluid. Many researches have been conducted to understand the mechanism of the viscosity change of MRF but there are few report which directly indicate the relation between the cluster formation and the viscosity change because of the difficulty of the observation such phenomena simultaneously. In this study, the relation between particle clustering and viscosity change has been investigated using DEM-DNS simulation. The simulations are conducted just a few chain-like clusters of magnetic particles in simple shear flow and the simulation results indicate that the apparent viscosity corresponds to both of the chain length and the angle between magnetic field direction and chain axis which depend on the Mason number.

Surface modification of functional polymers onto liposomes is effective strategy to obtain functional liposomes that release drugs at target site or intracellular compartments. Here, design of pH-sensitive liposomes for cell-specific intracellular drug delivery was summarized. Liposomes modified with hyaluronic acid derivatives exhibited selective anticancer drug delivery to CD44-expressing cancer cells. Furthermore, liposomes modified with curdlan derivatives were efficiently recognized by dendritic cells, leading to efficient antigen delivery, activation of dendritic cell and induction of antitumor immunity on tumor-bearing mice. Therefore, functional polymer-modified liposomes are promising for cell-selective cancer chemotherapeutic system or immunotherapeutic systems.

Thermally conductive polymer composites offer new possibilities for the thermal management in electronic devices. An approach of current interest to improve the thermal conductivity of polymer composites is the addition of high thermally conductive fillers with different shape and size. This paper described an overview of the microstructural design techniques for polymer composites with high thermal conductivity, and recent progress and advances that have been made on the enhancement of thermal conductivity of the polymer composites.