When vibrated, fluid surfaces can exhibit standing waves known as Faraday waves. In this experiment, increased forcing of these standing waves causes the formation of a jet. Under the right Keep reading
Month: January 2025
Reynolds on Transition
For although only the disciplined motion is recognized in military tactics, troops have another manner of motion when anything disturbs their order. And this is precisely how it is with Keep reading
Volcanic Shock Waves
This footage of last year’s eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland shows shockwaves emanating from the mouth of the volcano as hot ash and gases explode from underground.
Laminar Flow Control
On Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 3:00 EDT NASA engineers are holding an online chat about a current project to achieve laminar flow control on business jet-class airplanes. Keeping flow Keep reading
Computational Vortex Rings
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) sometimes gets a bad rep as “colorful fluid dynamics”, but as computers get faster and faster, more complicated and physically accurate simulations are possible. Shown here Keep reading
Solar Fluid Dynamics
The sun is a wild place fluid dynamically. The surface is riddled with convection cells the size of the Earth, and prominences of plasma (ionized gas) erupt from the surface Keep reading
Underwater Explosions
As powerful as explosions can be above ground, they are even more dangerous underwater. Since water, unlike air, is incompressible, the pressure wave at the front of an underwater explosion Keep reading
Smoke Visualization on an F-16
Flow around an F-16XL Scamp model is visualized using smoke illuminated by laser sheets. Lasers are common equipment in fluids laboratories; they’re useful for flow visualization and for many velocimetry Keep reading
Droplet Impact on Superhydrophobic Surfaces
High-speed video of water droplets impacting on superhydrophobic surfaces demonstrates the impressive elasticity and surface tension of the droplets. Impacts vibrate and reflect through the droplet, but only a drop Keep reading
Wind Tunnel Testing
This photo shows a prototype of the X-48C blended wing body aircraft being tested in NASA Langley’s 12-Foot Low-Speed Tunnel. Blended wing bodies have many advantages over conventional tube-and-wing designs: Keep reading