Aspects of particulate (and droplet) flow

by Prof. Rama Govindarajan (ICTS-TIFR, Bangalore)

Tuesday 27 May 2025, 16:00 → 17:30 Asia/Kolkata

AG (69)

In the oceans, the rivers, the atmosphere and in industry, particulate (or droplet) flow problems are common, and important to understand. Some examples are dust storms, clouds, marine snow and microplastic dispersal. We will start with the simple problem of gravitational settling of a tiny particle through quiescent fluid, and move on to situations with a background flow and the interaction of multiple particles. We will see that clustering of particles is a common feature, due to background vorticity as well as a clumping instability, and discuss why this is important. Turbulent particulate flows are usually impossible to solve for, on computers of today or the foreseeable future, so we need to develop a range of analytical and numerical techniques. I will talk about a few of these challenges.