No abstract

As sea-level rise (SLR) accelerates due to climate change, its multidisciplinary field of science has similarly expanded, from about 50 documents in 1990 to nearly 15,000 documents from 1990 to 2021. Here, big data, bibliometric techniques are adopted to systematically analyse this growing, large-scale literature. Four main research clusters (themes) emerge: (I) geological dimensions and biogeochemical cycles, (II) impacts, risks, and adaptation, (III) physical components of sea-level change, and (IV) coastal ecosystems and habitats, with 16 associated sub-themes. This analysis provides insights into the prioritisation of research agendas, the challenges and opportunities of future integrative, global scale assessment processes (e.g., next IPCC report), and how effectively this discipline is achieving societal impact. For example, the relative importance of sub-themes evolves consistently with a decline in pure science analysis towards solution-focused topics associated with SLR risks such as surface elevation change, flooding, ice sheets dynamics, coastal erosion and squeeze, and engineered shorelines.

No abstract

Encapsulation, i.e. the coating of tiny solid or liquid particles in a liquid film, has received a growing interest among scholars due to its practical applications, especially in food and pharmaceutical industries. Encapsulation technology is used in coating and controlling drug delivery by protecting the active agents from environmental pressures (e.g., heat, oxygen) and unsought colours/odours. In practice, when dealing with solid particles, this process occurs through impacting liquid droplets of the coating material upon the agent particles. While, in reality, droplet and particle can freely move before and after the collision, a vast majority of the previous efforts to characterize drop-particle impact outcomes have considered that one of the two components is stationary. This study numerically investigates the head-on collisions between freely moving droplet of a glycerine-water solution or synthetic fluids, and freely moving dry spherical particles. In order to achieve this results, a novel 2D axisymmetric Level Set simulation includes fluid-structure interaction (FSI) and an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) technique The relative impact velocity and drop-to-particle density ratio are varied across the simulation cases to indicate the importance of variations in momentum. These preliminary results indicate that optimising the momentum is a key factor in achieving a full and stable encapsulation, requiring further research.

As sea-level rise (SLR) accelerates due to climate change, its multidisciplinary field of science has similarly expanded, from 41 articles published in 1990 to 1475 articles published in 2021, and nearly 15,000 articles published in the Web of Science over this 32-year period. Here, big-data bibliometric techniques are adopted to systematically analyse this large literature set. Four main research clusters (themes) emerge: (I) geological dimensions and sea-level indicators, (II) impacts, risks, and adaptation, (III) physical components of sea-level change, and (IV) coastal ecosystems and habitats, with 16 associated sub-themes. This analysis provides insights into the evolution of research agendas, the challenges and opportunities for future assessments (e.g. next IPCC reports), and growing focus on adaptation. For example, the relative importance of sub-themes evolves consistently with a relative decline in pure science analysis towards solution-focused topics associated with SLR risks such as high-end rises, declining ecosystem services, flood hazards, and coastal erosion/squeeze.