Abstract
Bubbles are a fundamental physical model system to decipher subtle interfacial physics. An understanding of the physics governing bubbles starts by understanding their lifetime and stability in a base-state prior to studying the effect of contamination and additives. We show how for clean air bubbles at the interface a large class of Marangoni flow-inducing effects fundamentally change the thinning of bubble films and dramatically enhance bubble lifetime. We discuss how their clean base-state compares to their dynamics when contamination takes place.
About the Speaker
Prof. Bourouiba founded and directs The Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory and the Fluids and Health Network at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research interests and activities span a broad range of applied mathematics approaches and curiosity driven fluid dynamic experiments at various scales. She has worked and combined experiments, theory, and numerics on various fluid dynamics problems from turbulence to interfacial flows and her recent work elucidated multi-scale dynamics of unsteady fluid fragmentation, droplet and bubble dynamics, and complex and multiphase flows with particular interest in coupled physics and biology problems driving mixing, transport, persistence, and adaptation of interfaces and organisms, or contamination relevant for health, environmental, and industrial processes. Prof. Bourouiba is the recipient of many awards and recognitions, including the Tse Cheuk Ng Tai’s Prize for Innovative Research in Health Sciences, the Ole Madsen Mentoring Award, the Smith Family Foundation Odyssey Award for high-risk/high-reward basic science research. She was elected fellow of the American Physical Society in 2021 and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2022. More here https://lbourouiba.mit.edu/contact.
Host: Professor Jie Feng