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Fluid Dynamics Colloquium

Monday, Jan 23rd, 2006, 11:30 AM
Cullimore Lecture Hall, Room 611
New Jersey Institute of Technology

Turbulent mixing with physical surface tension and mass diffusion

Xinfeng Liu

Dept. of Applied Math and Statistics, SUNY Stony Brook

Abstract

Simulated mixing rates of Rayleigh-Taylor instability for miscible fluids with physical mass diffusion are shown to agree with experiment; for immiscible fluids with physical values of surface tension the numerical data lies in the center of the experimental values. The simulations are based on an improved front tracking algorithm to control numerical surface tension and on improved physical modeling to allow physical values of mass diffusion or surface tension. In summary, we find significant dependence of the mixing rates on scale breaking phenomena. We introduce tools to analyze the bubble merger process and confirm that bubble interactions, as in a bubble merger model, drive the mixing growth rate.