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Bottom: Field line through a curved surface, showing the setup of the unit normal and surface element to calculate flux. To calculate the flux of a vector field F (red arrows) through a surface S the surface is divided into small patches dS. The flux through each patch is equal to the normal (perpendicular) component of the field, the dot ...
In vector calculus, divergence is a vector operator that operates on a vector field, producing a scalar field giving the quantity of the vector field's source at each point. More technically, the divergence represents the volume density of the outward flux of a vector field from an infinitesimal volume around a given point.
Fick's first law relates the diffusive flux to the gradient of the concentration. It postulates that the flux goes from regions of high concentration to regions of low concentration, with a magnitude that is proportional to the concentration gradient (spatial derivative), or in simplistic terms the concept that a solute will move from a region of high concentration to a region of low ...
The divergence theorem can be used to calculate a flux through a closed surface that fully encloses a volume, like any of the surfaces on the left. It can not directly be used to calculate the flux through surfaces with boundaries, like those on the right. (Surfaces are blue, boundaries are red.)
To be able to calculate this time evolution, one needs to know how to calculate the flux. This section explores the simplest hypothesis: flux is linearly related to the concentration difference (just as for molecular diffusion). This also comes as the most intuitive guess from the analysis just made. Flux is in principle a vector.
The simple but crucial difference between the Teorell formula and the Onsager laws is the concentration factor in the Teorell expression for the flux. In the Einstein–Teorell approach, if for the finite force the concentration tends to zero then the flux also tends to zero, whereas the Onsager equations violate this simple and physically ...
Mathematically, mass flux is defined as the limit =, where = = is the mass current (flow of mass m per unit time t) and A is the area through which the mass flows.. For mass flux as a vector j m, the surface integral of it over a surface S, followed by an integral over the time duration t 1 to t 2, gives the total amount of mass flowing through the surface in that time (t 2 − t 1): = ^.
The convection–diffusion equation can be derived in a straightforward way [4] from the continuity equation, which states that the rate of change for a scalar quantity in a differential control volume is given by flow and diffusion into and out of that part of the system along with any generation or consumption inside the control volume: + =, where j is the total flux and R is a net ...