Dissipative Particle Dynamics: Introduction, Methodology and Complex Fluid Applications — a Review

The dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) technique is a relatively new mesoscale technique which was initially developed to simulate hydrodynamic behavior in mesoscopic complex fluids. It is essentially a particle technique in which molecules are clustered into the said particles, and this coarse graining is a very important aspect of the DPD as it allows significant computational speed-up. This increased computational efficiency, coupled with the recent advent of high performance computing, has subsequently enabled researchers to numerically study a host of complex fluid applications at a refined level. In this review, we trace the developments of various important aspects of the DPD methodology since it was first proposed in the in the early 1990’s. In addition, we review notable published works which employed DPD simulation for complex fluid applications.