For more than a century, scientists have been fascinated by the jet that forms after a drop impacts a liquid. In this study, researchers tracked fluorescent particles in the fluid Keep reading
Tag: PIV
Snowflake Velocimetry
In our era of remote learning, students don’t always have a chance to do hands-on lab experiments in the usual fashion. But that doesn’t mean they can’t explore important flow Keep reading
Gliding Birds Get Extra Lift From Their Tails
Gorgeous new research highlights some of the differences between fixed-wing flight and birds. Researchers trained a barn owl, tawny owl, and goshawk to glide through a cloud of helium-filled bubbles Keep reading
Laser Goggles for Parrotlets
Many experimental techniques in fluid dynamics use lasers. One such technique, particle image velocimetry (PIV), introduces tiny particles into the flow and uses a laser to illuminate the particles. By Keep reading
Flying with Large Ears
Evolution often requires compromise between competing effects. Large-eared bats, for example, rely on the size of their ears to aid their echolocation, but such large ears can hurt them aerodynamically, Keep reading
Effects of Hills on Flow
Hills and other topology can have interesting and complex effects on a flowfield. With the FAITH experiment, NASA has been investigating an axisymmetric model hill using a combination of experimental Keep reading
Particle Image Velocimetry
One common experimental technique for measuring velocity in a flow is particle image velocimetry (PIV), shown above. Special particles are introduced–seeded–into the flow. Typically, these particles are small, neutrally buoyant, and Keep reading
Flow Visualization
[original media no longer available] This video gives a neat introduction to some common and uncommon techniques used to visualize fluid flows.