Fluid Dynamics and Granular Media

Fluid dynamics has been an extremely active and exciting field over the past two decades, encompassing much of the revolution of nonlinear science including chaos, low-dimensional nonlinear dynamics, hydrodynamic instability and pattern formation, coherent structures, nonlinear waves, etc. Today we have greatly improved tools such as fast computers, automated data acquisition, high-resolution and high-speed digital video cameras, and quantitative measurement techniques such as particle-image velocimetry (PIV). Recently, new laboratory-scale experiments have begun to address long-standing issues in geophysical and astrophysical systems such as ocean circulation, planetary atmosphere dynamics, etc.

The study of granular media has emerged recently as a fascinating topic combining particle discreteness at the macroscopic scale with new phenomena arising from inelastic collisions between particles in low density phases and from force chains in static "glassy" configurations. From the individual particle description where notions of kinetic theory and statistical mechanics are important to a more continuum description along the lines of fluid dynamics, the characterization of the properties, both static and dynamic, pose an exciting challenge for future research.

The Fluid Dynamics and Granular Media Research Team in the Condensed Matter & Thermal Physics Group (MST-10) is led by Robert Ecke. Research has included chaos & dynamical systems in cryogenic 3He-superfluid 4He mixtures, pattern formation and spatiotemporal chaos in convection, rotating convection, amplitude equations, and turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection. Recent experiments include two-dimensional turbulence in soap films, particle-fluid interactions, vertically-vibrated granular chains, granular chute flow, and stably-stratified boundary-layer shear flows as a model of overflows in the North Atlantic.

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