Diffusion through thin membranes: Modeling across scales

From macroscopic to microscopic scales it is demonstrated that diffusion through membranes can be modeled using specific boundary conditions across them. The membranes are here considered thin in comparison to the overall size of the system. In a macroscopic scale the membrane is introduced as a transmission boundary condition, which enables an effective modeling of systems that involve multiple scales. In a mesoscopic scale, a numerical lattice-Boltzmann scheme with a partial-bounceback condition at the membrane is proposed and analyzed. It is shown that this mesoscopic approach provides a consistent approximation of the transmission boundary condition. Furthermore, analysis of the mesosco…