Project Fact File

Title: Bifurcations in convection
Category: maths
Area: Scientific computations and computational fluid dynamics
No. of units: 1 or 2 or 4
Supervisor: Sergey Suslov (Staff Profile)
Description:

If you pour some oil in a frying pan and start heating it, eventually you will see that the oil will start moving: rising at some places, sinking at others. This phenomenon is known as convection. But how is it described mathematically? And what would happen if we heat the fluid in a container from the side rather than from the bottom? For example, if petrol in a large tank at refinery is heated by the rising Sun. Will any motion arise and can it lead to any dangerous consequences? The answer can be found using the special mathematical theory: theory of hydrodynamic stability and bifurcations in fluid flows. The goal of this project will be to determine what sort of bifurcations can occur in closed containers subject to non-uniform heating. This will be done using a state-of-the art spectral numerical method. The project will help you to understand the principles of meshless numerical methods, appreciate their exceptional accuracy and robustness and obtain practically important information on how the convective motion starts and develops in realistic situations. Some basic programming skills will be needed for this computational project.

Student: NULL