Project Fact File

Title: Buoyancy and shear competition in convection
Category: maths
Area: hydrodynamic stability
No. of units: 1 or 2 or 4
Supervisor: Sergey Suslov (Staff Profile)
Description:

Surely you know what convection is: haven"t you ever boiled water to make tea? The hot fluid with lesser density rises being pushed by the buoyancy force. And shear in the fluid is familiar to you as well: any river flows faster in the middle than near the banks, so that the fluid layers in the middle of the river slide with respect to the ones which are closer to the bottom or to the banks. This causes flow shear (or friction) forces. But what if both buoyancy and shear forces act simultaneously? Which force will have stronger effect on the resulting fluid flow? You will be able to answer this question while working on this project. Not only will you learn about various modern mathematical and computational techniques, but also this is your chance to study something practically useful: such flow situations occur in many industrial applications such as, for example, thermal insulation systems and chemical vapour deposition reactors.

Student: NULL