A vast body of literature dealing with bubbles, drops, and solid particles has
grown up in engineering, physics, chemistry, geophysics, and applied mathe-
mathematics. The principal objective of this book is to give a comprehensive critical
review of this literature as it applies to the fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and
mass transfer of single bubbles, drops, and particles. We have tried primarily to
provide a reference text for research workers concerned with multiphase phe-
phenomena and a source of information, reference, and background material for
engineers, students, and teachers who must deal with these phenomena in their
work. In many senses, bubbles and drops are the chemical engineer's elemen-
elementary particles. Inevitably the book has a bias toward the concerns of chemical
engineers since each of the authors is a chemical engineer. However, we have
attempted to keep our scope sufficiently broad to be of interest to readers from
other disciplines. It became clear to us while preparing this book that workers
in one area are commonly oblivious to advances in other fields. If this book
does no more than bring literature from other fields to the attention of research
workers, it will have accomplished part of our purpose.