We can’t always see the flows around us, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. Audobon Photography Award winner Kathrin Swaboda waited for a cold morning to catch this spectacular photo of a red-winged blackbird’s song. In the morning chill, moisture from the bird’s breath condensed inside the vortex rings it emitted, giving us a glimpse of its sound. (Image credit: K. Swaboda; via Gizmodo; submitted by Joseph S and Stuart H)
Search results for: “vortex”
Dandelion Flight, Continued
Not long ago, we learned for the first time that dandelion seeds fly thanks to a stable separated vortex ring that sits behind their bristly pappus. Building on that work, researchers have now published a mathematical analysis of flow around a simplified dandelion pappus. Despite their simplifications, the model captures the flow observed in the previous experiments (bottom image: experiments on left; model on right).
The model also allowed researchers to test various features – like the number of filaments in the pappus – and see how they affected the flow. Interestingly, they found that dandelion flight was most stable with about 100 filaments, which is right around the number of a typical pappus! (Image credits: dandelion – Pixabay, figure – P. Ledda et al.; research credit: P. Ledda et al.; via APS Physics; submitted by Kam-Yung Soh and Marc A.)
How Rain Can Spread Pathogens
Rainfall can help spread pathogens from an infected plant to healthy ones. This transfer can happen both through droplets and by dry-dispersal of pathogen spores (top). When a raindrop hits a leaf, its initial spread triggers a vortex ring of air that can lift thousands of dry spores into a swirling trajectory (bottom). That boost in height carries spores beyond the slower wind speeds of the plant’s boundary layer and into faster air streams that disperse it toward healthy plants. (Image and research credit: S. Kim et al.)
Plant Week: Dandelions in Flight
To kick off Plant Week here on FYFD, we’re taking a closer look at that ubiquitous flower: the dandelion. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, these little guys manage to get just about everywhere, thanks in part to their amazing ability to stay windborne for up to 150 km! To do that, the dandelion uses a bristly umbrella of tiny filaments, known as a pappus, that can generate more than four times the drag per area of a solid disk. Its porosity – all that empty space between the filaments – is also key to its stability; it helps create and stabilize a separated vortex ring that the seed uses to stay aloft. Check out the full video below! (Image and video credit: N. Sharp)
Granular Instabilities
Granular mixtures show surprising similarities to fluids, even though their underlying physics differ. The latest example of this is a Rayleigh-Taylor-like instability that occurs when heavy particles sit atop lighter ones. By combining vertical vibration and an upward gas flow, researchers found that the lighter particles form fingers and bubbles that seep up between the heavier grains (upper left). Visually, it looks remarkably similar to a lava lamp or other Rayleigh-Taylor-driven instability (upper right).
But the physics behind the two are distinctly different. In the fluid, buoyancy drives the instability while surface tension acts as a stabilizing force. There’s no surface tension in a granular material, though. Instead, the drag force from gas flowing upward provides the vertical impetus while friction between the grains – essentially an effective viscosity – replaces surface tension as a stabilizing influence.
The similarities don’t stop there, though. When the researchers tested a “bubble” of heavy grains suspended in lighter ones (lower left), they found that, instead of sinking, the granular bubble split in two and drifted downward on a diagonal. Eventually, those daughter bubbles also split. Again, visually, this looks a lot like what happens to a drop of ink or food coloring falling through water (lower right), but the physics aren’t the same at all.
In the fluid, the breakup happens when a falling vortex ring splits. In the granular example, gas moving upward tends to channel around the heavy grains because they’re harder to move through. Eventually, this builds up a solidified region under the bubble. When the heavy grains can’t move directly down, they split and sink through the surrounding suspended particles until they build up another jammed area and have to split again. (Image credits: granular RTI – C. McLaren et al.; RTI simulation – M. Stock; bag instability – D. Zillis; research credit: C. McLaren et al.; submitted by Kam-Yung Soh)
Tornado from a Drone
One of the challenges in studying tornadoes is being in the right place at the right time. In that regard, storm chaser Brandon Clement hit the jackpot earlier this week when he captured this footage of a tornado near Sulphur, Oklahoma from his drone. He was able to follow the twister for several minutes until it apparently dissipated.
Scientists are still uncertain exactly how tornadoes form, but they’ve learned to recognize the key ingredients. A strong variation of wind speed with altitude can create a horizontally-oriented vortex, which a localized updraft of warm, moist air can lift and rotate to vertical, birthing a tornado. These storms most commonly occur in the central U.S. and Canada during springtime, and researchers are actively pursing new ways to predict and track tornadoes, including microphone arrays capable of locating them before they fully form. (Image and video credit: B. Clement; via Earther)
Vibrating in the Flow
Objects can obviously affect flows, but that’s not a one-way street. Flows can also affect objects, even ones as simple a circular cylinder. If you live somewhere with traffic lights mounted to a horizontal bar, you’ve probably seen this. On a windy day, the beam holding the traffic lights will oscillate up and down. This is an example of vortex-induced vibration, a coupling between the flow structures formed by an object and the motion of the object itself. With cylinders, engineers have mostly studied a situation like the traffic light – one where the motion of the cylinder is perpendicular to the direction of the flow.
But it’s also possible to get vortex-induced vibration in the same direction as the flow. That’s what you see visualized in the images above. Notice how the oscillation of the cylinders is inline with the flow direction. As with the crossflow version of vortex-induced vibration, this inline example has several wake forms that vary based on flow conditions. (Image and research credit: T. Gurian et al.)
Paddling
When I lived in New England, I often spent summers paddling around a lake in either a kayak or canoe. Every stroke was an opportunity to stare down into the dark water and watch how the flow curled around my oar. Here you see a bit of what that looks like from underwater.
The animation above shows a flat plate – twice as tall as it is wide – submerged about 20 mm below the surface and accelerated steadily from rest. As it starts moving, there’s a clear vortex ring formed and shed behind it. You can also see how the plate distorts the free surface into large depressions. Both of these cause extra drag on the plate. Eventually, though, the plate reaches a steady state.
All together, what you see here is a good representation of what’s going on when a rower first begins to accelerate their boat from rest. Hydrodynamically speaking, the best way to do that isn’t to dig in with a deep stroke. It’s to use a series of short, relatively shallow strokes to get the boat up to speed. This takes advantage of the efficiency of drag generation during acceleration to get the boat to its cruising speed quickly. (Image and research credit: E. Grift et al.)
Enormous Ice Disk
We’ve seen spinning ice disks before, but this month Westbrook, Maine has developed the largest one I’ve ever seen. A research paper from 2016 indicates that this seemingly alien formation spins due to an oddity of water. Water is at its densest around 4 degrees Celsius, so as the ice of the disk melts in the warmer waters of the river, it sinks. That downward plume sets up a vortex in the water beneath the disk. And as the water spins, it drags the ice with it, causing the disk’s rotation. The warmer the water is, the faster the disk spins. (Image credit: T. Radel/City of Westbrook; research credit: S. Dorbolo et al.; via Gizmodo; submitted by jpshoer)
The Best of FYFD 2018
2018 was a busy year for me with over 40 days of business travel, 10 invited talks, and a whole slew of new YouTube videos on top of regular FYFD posts. But now it’s time for the traditional look back at the top 10 FYFD posts of 2018, according to you:
1. Swimming so easy a dead fish can do it
2. The wall of lava lamps that helps secure the Internet
3. Jellyfish versus vortex ring
4. Crushing crayons in a hydraulic press shows off the sharkskin instability
5. Vortex ring from an exploding meteor
6. Starburst patterns form when avalanching materials size separate
7. Kelp change shape depending on their currents
8. The creepy hydraulics of a spider’s gait
9. Pneumatically-driven, 3D-printed plants of the future
10. Exothermic chemistry visualized in infraredThis year’s list is an interesting mix – some biology, vortex rings, non-Newtonian and granular physics; it’s a good list for some of the more unexpected sides of fluid dynamics.
If you’d like to see more great posts like these, please remember that FYFD is primarily supported by readers like you. You can help support the site by becoming a patron, making a one-time donation, or buying some merch. Happy New Year!
(Image credits: fish – D. Beal et al.; lava lamps – T. Scott; vortex ring – V. de Valles; crayons – Hydraulic Press Channel; meteor – P. Horálek; rotating drum – I. Zuriguel et al.; kelp – J. Hildering; spider – R. Miller; hydrophytes – N. Hone; chemistry – Beauty of Science)