FURI | Fall 2020

Study of the Effects of Polydispersity on Vortex Tubes

This study explores polydispersity as a method of mitigating vortical flows. A cluster of particles with ranging sizes will be dispersed in the core of a vortex to observe the rate of dissipation and vortex evolution. One main motivation for this study is that vortices affect airport efficiency and persist in the atmosphere in the form of contrails.  Despite this, currently, there is not an effective way to destabilize them. The research hopes to determine the best configuration of particle sizes that will efficiently dissipate a vortex, and analyze subtle interaction in multiphase flow.  The experiment will utilize massive parallel simulations to solve nonlinear governing equations.