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Back to Departmental Colloquium: Fall 2006

Departmental Colloquium


Date: Thursday, Aug 31, 2006

Time: 4:15PM

Location: JWB 335


Michael J. Shelley

Applied Math Lab, The Courant Institute

Title

Transport in Visco-Elastic Flows.

Abstract

I will discuss three interesting and related problems in the dynamics of complex fluids at low Reynolds number. The first concerns how visco-elasticity affects the peristaltic pumping of fluids – which arises in many biological settings – especially as related to loss of flow reversibility associated with the Stokes equations. The second seeks to understand, in a relatively simple setting, recent observations of complex flow structures and efficient mixing in low Reynolds number visco-elastic flows. And the third studies the dynamics of an elastic fiber moving in a simple cellular flow. Here the fiber can act as a spatially extended test particle whose internal dynamics, particularly buckling at hyperbolic points, leading to complex transport properties across space.

Mathematical Biology

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