Turbulence over a burning forest can carry embers that spread the wildfire. To understand how wildfire plumes interact with the natural turbulence found above the forest canopy, researchers modeled the Keep reading
Tag: experimental fluid dynamics
Testing Turbulence’s Limits
Understanding chaotic, turbulent flows has long challenged scientists and engineers due to their sheer complexity. In turbulent flows, energy cascades from the largest scales — like the kilometer-size cross-section of Keep reading
The Optical Atom
Researchers applied a quantum mechanical technique to study an evaporating drop in extreme detail. The team trapped a spherical water drop and collected the light scattered off it as it Keep reading
Classifying Waves
In a lab, researchers create their waves in a long, clear-sided tank, where they can observe how the waves form, travel, and interact. To generate the wave, they use a Keep reading
Testing Full-Size Engines
Engineers can often use small-scale models to test the physics of their creations, but sometimes there’s no substitute for going large. In this photo, we see a full-size commercial engine Keep reading
Optimizing Wind Farms Collectively
In a typical wind farm, each wind turbine aligns itself to the local wind direction. In an ideal world where every turbine was completely independent, this would maximize the power Keep reading
Making Hurricanes
With oceans warming, there’s more energy available to intensify hurricanes. And while our weather models have gotten better at predicting where hurricanes will go, they’re less good at predicting hurricane Keep reading
When Seeing a Flow Changes It
Adding dye to a flow is a common technique for visualization. After all, many flows in fluids like air and water are invisible to our bare eyes. But for some Keep reading
Measuring Drag
After a noticeable rise in the prevalence of home runs beginning in 2015, Major League Baseball commissioned a report that found the increase was caused by a small 3% reduction Keep reading
Acidic Aerosols
As ocean waves crash, they generate aerosols — tiny liquid and solid particulates — that interact with the atmosphere. Curious about the chemistry of these tiny drops, researchers set out Keep reading