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Kelli Hendrickson, Vortical Flow Research Lab, MIT – Applied Mathematics Colloquium
November 4, 2019 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Title: Bubbles, wakes, and pipes
Abstract: Ever go to the ocean and watch the waves break on the shore? Or, view the wake as it forms behind a boat? These everyday activities involve violent free-surface flows with large void fractions, large density ratios, and high Reynolds numbers. They present scientific and technical challenges to solve and understand. I will describe our recent efforts towards answering questions such as: “Can we predict the location, amount and size distribution of entrained bubbles in ship wakes?” and “How do slugs form in mixed oil-gas pipe flows?”. Our work combines both theoretical and computational efforts to understand the underlying structures, mechanisms, and scaling of these phenomena. The results of this effort have broad implications for civil, environmental, ocean, and naval engineering applications.