Recurrent flows: The clockwork behind turbulence

Speaker: Predrag Cvitanović, Georgia Institute of Technology

When: November 17, 2015 (Tue), 03:30PM to 04:30PM (add to my calendar)
Location: SCI 109
View the poster for this event.

This event is part of the Physics Department Colloquia Series.

In the world of moderate Reynolds number, everyday turbulence of fluids flowing across planes and down pipes, a velvet revolution is taking place. Experiments are almost as detailed as the numerical simulations, DNS (Direct Numerical Simulation) is yielding exact numerical solutions that one dared not dream about a decade ago, and dynamical systems visualization of turbulent fluid's state space geometry is unexpectedly elegant.

We shall take you on a tour of this newly breached, hitherto inaccessible territory. Mastery of fluid mechanics is no prerequisite, and perhaps a hindrance: the talk is aimed at anyone who had ever wondered why - if no cloud is ever seen twice - we know a cloud when we see one? And how do we turn that into mathematics?