A sneeze. Ocean currents. Smoke. What do these have in common?
A sneeze. Ocean currents. Smoke. What do these have in common? They’re instances of turbulence: unpredictable, chaotic, uneven fluid flows of fluctuating velocity and pressure. Though ubiquitous in nature, these flows remain somewhat of a mystery, theoretically and computationally.
“Most flows that we encounter in nature are turbulent — it does not matter whether it is the flow outside the airplane that makes us fasten our seatbelts, or the flow in a small stream,” said UC Santa Barbara mathematics professor Björn Birnir. “Turbulence is difficult to understand because the mathematical models that describe it are nonlinear, stochastic and the solutions are unstable. This made it necessary to develop new theories to truly understand the nature of turbulence.”
Fortunately, Birnir and Luiza Angheluta of the University of Oslo are getting us closer to being able to characterize turbulence, with an approach that captures some of the myriad complex phenomena that occur over the evolution of a turbulent flow. Their research is published in the journal Physical Review Research.
Read more at University of California - Santa Barbara
Photo Credit: Jan-Mallander via Pixabay
