Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

Fluid mixing in ideal systems and large-scale oceans

Nairita Pal

Centre for Ocean, River, Atmosphere and Land Sciences (CORAL), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur

Turbulent mixing and phase-separation of two or more fluids is an important physical process that has wide-ranging applications, including natural phenomena (ocean mixing) as well as in various small--scale human technologies. Fluid mixing is a multiscale process, in which mass and momentum exchange takes place in a highly nonlinear fashion in space and time. In the first half of this talk, I shall describe my research on turbulent phase-separation in multiphase fluid systems, using a time-dependent Ginzburg Landau formulation. I will show how a mathematical study of multiphase systems using the Ginzburg Landau method uncovers universal features of two-fluid mixing and phase separation

In the second half of my talk, I will describe an analytical moment closure model of the turbulent energy fluctuations in a multiphase system. The analytical turbulence model bridges the gap between theory and numerics of fluid mixing, and describes important phenomena such as transition to turbulence.

Lastly, I will shed some light on my future research as to how the use of analytical models, numerical simulations and recently developed data--driven techniques will help to uncover new physics for important real--world applications.