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SEMINAR: Mathematics and Statistics Colloquium

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Today's date is Friday, March 29, 2024
Mathematics and Statistics Colloquium Other events...
Everyone is warmly invited to our Mathematics and Statistics Colloquium. This will be the first talk by our newly appointed Professor of Applied Mathematics, please come along to welcome Professor Abarzhi to the School.

Talk title: Rayleigh-Taylor instability and interfacial mixing

Abstract:

Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) develops when fluids of different densities are accelerated against their density gradient. Extensive interfacial mixing of the fluids ensues with time. Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) mixing controls a broad variety of processes in fluids, plasmas and materials, in high and low energy density regimes, at astrophysical and atomistic scales. Examples include supernova explosion, flows in atmospheres and oceans, oil recovery and fluid atomisation. In some of these cases (e.g. inertial confinement fusion) RT mixing should be mitigated; in others (e.g. turbulent combustion) it should be enhanced. Understanding the fundamentals of RTI is crucial for achieving a better control of non-equilibrium processes in nature and technology.

Traditionally, it was presumed that RTI leads to uncontrolled growth of small-scale imperfections, single-scale nonlinear dynamics, and extensive mixing that is similar to canonical turbulence. Recent theoretical and experimental developments suggest an alternative scenario of RTI evolution: the interface is necessary for RT mixing to accelerate, the acceleration effects are strong enough to suppress turbulence at large scale, and the RT dynamics is multi-scale and well correlated. This talk presents a rigorous symmetry-based consideration of the fundamentals of RTI and RT mixing, and summarises what is certain and what is not so certain in our knowledge of RTI. We focus on the question - Is RT interfacial mixing a disordered process indeed? We also discuss new opportunities for improvements of predictive modelling capabilities, physical description, and control of RT mixing in fluids, plasmas and materials.
Speaker(s) Professor Snezhana Abarzhi
Contact Luke Morgan <[email protected]>
Start Thu, 27 Oct 2016 16:00
End Thu, 27 Oct 2016 17:00
Submitted by Luke Morgan <[email protected]>
Last Updated Thu, 27 Oct 2016 09:53
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