Abstract:- Fluid flow is laminar, or turbulent, or something in-between. Honey normally flows in smooth laminar fashion but a volcanic eruption is fierce and turbulent. Laminar flow is efficient and turbulence is wasteful. But turbulence has its uses, like when we want sugar to mix into our tea.
When we knew all the relevant equations for laminar-turbulent transition more than a hundred years ago, why have we still not understood it theoretically? And experimentally: is it really so hard to make fluid flow through a pipe and make a few measurements? We'll talk about all this, and about the questions our group is asking on this topic.
About the Speaker:- Rama Govindarajan is interested in solving fluid dynamical problems of different kinds. She did her BTech in IIT Delhi, PhD in IISc Bengaluru and postdoc in Caltech. She worked in the National Aerospace Labs and in the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research before joining TIFR. She won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Engineering, and is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, India and the American Physical Society.
