AmeriMech Symposium on

Fluid Transport and Nonlinear Dynamics

Fluid flows often possess regions of enhanced or inhibited stirring, leading to spatially inhomogeneous and anisotropic transport. Recent studies reveal that a root cause behind both phenomena is the presence of exceptional material surfaces that act as coherent transport barriers. These barriers either facilitate stirring through their intense stretching and folding action, or block the fluid from entering select material domains.

Coherent transport barriers in two-dimensional steady and time periodic flows have been studied extensively via asymptotic tools of classical nonlinear dynamics, such as Poincare maps and classical invariant manifolds. Extensions of these tools to realistic temporally aperiodic, finite-time and three-dimensional flows have been emerging recently. Questions still remain to be settled, however, about differences in the theoretical definitions of coherent transport barriers, as well as their numerical and experimental identification. Key application areas driving this research are environmental problems, such as transport of physical, chemical and biological tracers in the ocean and atmosphere; technological applications, such as mixing in jet engines and along airfoils; and biological applications including transport of actively swimming or flying, navigating and feeding organisms.

Scope

This four-day AmeriMech symposium will bring together engineers, physicists, oceanographers and applied mathematicians to discuss the current state of the art and challenges in the theoretical, computational and experimental identification of transport barriers in realistic fluid flows. The meeting specifically seeks to promote cross-disciplinary and cross-continental intersections by surveying a multitude of approaches and applications, and to foster new collaborations driven by relevant environmental, industrial and biological flow problems.