Group contribution methods have been widely used for the estimation and prediction of properties of a great variety of chemical compounds and mixtures of compounds. In this paper, the glass transition temperature of polymers is evaluated by a second-order group contribution method previously developed by Ourique and Silva Telles (1997). From a total of 1018 polymers in the data base, 923 are selected as the training set to which group and interacting group contributions are assigned. The remaining 95 polymers are used as the validation set. Results are compared to the ones obtained by application method of Van Krevelen method's to the same data base.

The effect of surface topography upon the adsorption of dimer molecules is analyzed by means of grand canonical ensemble Monte Carlo simulations. Heterogeneous surfaces were assumed to consist of a square lattice containing active sites with two different energies. These were distributed in three different configurations: a random distribution of isolated sites; a random distribution of grains with four high-energy sites; and a random distribution of grains with nine high-energy sites. For the random distribution of isolated sites, the results are in good agreement with the molecular simulations performed by Nitta et al. (1997). In general, the comparison with theoretical models shows that the Nitta et al. (1984) isotherm presents good predictions of dimer adsorption both on homogeneous and heterogeneous surfaces with sites having small differences in characteristic energies. The molecular simulation results also show that the energy topology of the solid surfaces plays an important role in the adsorption of dimers on solids with large differences in site energies. For these cases, the Nitta et al. model does not describe well the data on dimer adsorption on random heterogeneous surfaces (grains with one acid site), but does describe reasonably well the adsorption of dimers on more patchwise heterogeneous surfaces (grains with nine acid sites).

The modified UNIFAC-Dortmund group contribution model is used for the correlation and prediction of salt effects in binary solvent-salt and ternary mixed solvent-salt systems. The long-range electrostatic interaction contribution, usually represented by a Debye-Hückel term, was empirically dropped. Previously published parameters for interactions between solvent groups (CH2, OH, CH3OH, H2O and CH3CO) were used, and group interactions between ions (Li+, Na+, K+, Ca+2, Cl-, Br-, NO3- and ACE-) and between ions and solvent groups have been estimated. The data base includes 29 binary and 56 ternary systems, used in part for the calculation of group interactions and in part for the testing of predictions.

The possibility of the inclusion of the charactheristics of surfaces in the formulation of closure equations for the turbulent fluxes is considered. The general formulation is presented in the form of an expression which, with respect to the fluid motion, it is a general constitutive equation as proposed by Noll, and to which, it was added the explicit dependence upon the wall configuration. Restrictions imposed by frame indifference, and by the symmetry group of the surface are examined.