A Modelling Medley of Slow Viscous Flows
Speaker: John Lister, University of Cambridge
Series: Other Events
Location:
Bowen Hall Room 222
Date/Time: Wednesday, February 6, 2013, 3:00 p.m.
- 4:00 p.m.
Very viscous flow has applications from swimming micro-organisms to convection in the Earth’s mantle, or from micro-fluidic devices to industrial glass production. Motivated by these, or by experimental observations of novel phenomena in simple physical systems, an applied mathematician finds a fertile source of viscous flow problems to attack with a combination of asymptotic and numerical methods. In this seminar, I will outline some of the diverse problems that interest me, including, time-permitting: the asymptotic structure of high-Rayleigh-number convection in a porous medium, and its applications to CO2 sequestration; the spreading of a viscous flow beneath a deformable elastic lid, where interaction between the fluid pressure and elastic stresses controls the rate of peeling or delamination; and the fall of a viscous thread onto a moving substrate, where the nonlinear dynamics of stretching, bending, coiling and coalescence generate a “fluid-mechanical sewing-machine.”
Biography:
John Lister is Professor of Fluid Mechanics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge and a Teaching Fellow of Trinity College. He is currently based in Princeton as an MAE Distinguished Visitor, and can be found in D207 until 6 April.
After a BA in Mathematics at Cambridge, Professor Lister did his PhD in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics. He is broadly interested in fundamental fluid mechanics, particularly viscous flow, and the application of fluid mechanics to understand processes in the Earth Sciences. Particular topics of interest include: viscous gravity currents and lava flows; CO2 sequestration; capillary break-up of drops and film rupture; similarity solutions and finite-time singularities; fluid-driven crack propagation and dykes; flow and elastic deformation; and the thermodynamics and fluid dynamics of the Earth’s core.
