Life Sciences & Physics Joint Seminar - Dynamics of Particulates in Fluid Flows
Transport of Fibers and Effects of Anisotropy on the Dynamics of Particulates in Fluid FlowsDr. Shima ParsaAssistant Professor of PhysicsSchool of Physics and Astronomy, RITAbstract:Transport and dynamics of anisotropic particles, ranging from dynamics of rod-like bacteria to sedimentation in riverbeds, are problems of great interests in physics, engineering and environmental sciences. Substantial work has been dedicated to spherical particles; however, most particles in nature have irregular and asymmetric shape. By studying the transport of fibers, 1mm to 1cm, in highly turbulent flow, we find that the fibers strongly align with the flow structure regardless of length. However, the variance of the rotation rate of fibers has a power law dependence on the length of fibers. Anisotropy in shape can introduce preferential alignment while suppressing the rotation, directly affecting the dynamics. Such effects can greatly impact the dispersion of species or even determine the concentration of them in flow.Speaker Bio:Shima Parsa is an assistant professor of Physics at Rochester Institute of Technology. She has joined RIT in 2019 after her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, where she studied dynamics of multiphase flow in porous media with applications in oil recovery. Shima completed her PhD in Physics at Wesleyan University, where she studied the dynamics of anisotropic particles in turbulence. She is an experimental Physicist with a passion for developing observational techniques to shed light on applied problems in Soft Matter. Her research at RIT spans from microfluidics to large scale sedimentation in river with a focus on understanding the fundamental physics of interaction between many bodies mediated by fluid flow. http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~sparsa Audience:Undergraduate & graduate level
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