Abstract:
Breaking waves at the water surface is a striking example of turbulent mixing across a fluid interface. The impact of the jet generates turbulence, entrains air into the water and ejects droplets into the air. A fundamental understanding of the general multi-scale properties of the resulting air-water turbulent flow is necessary to develop more accurate gas transfer or spray generation parameterizations.
In this talk, I will discuss the fate of bubbles under breaking waves, including air entrainment, bubble break-up by turbulence, from the initial deformation to the final pinching, and finally the bursting of bubbles at the free surface and the generation of spray droplets. I will present recent investigations of the dynamics of bubble break-up and bursting by combining laboratory experiments and numerical simulations and the observation of similarity solutions in these flows.
Bio:
I am Assistant Professor at Princeton University, in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department and the Princeton Environmental Institute.
https://ldeike.princeton.edu/
We work on fundamental fluid dynamics with an emphasis on non-linear and multi-scale systems. I am focusing on fundamental physics problems, motivated by their importance in environmental and industrial applications, as diverse as the statistics of waves in the ocean, floating ice sheets, gas transfer by surface breaking waves in the ocean, and spray dynamics in the atmosphere.
My approach is to design and develop complementary laboratory and numerical experiments to propose simple physical models describing the processes at play.
Host: Professor Jie Feng
