Speaker: Sara Nasab, University of California at Santa Cruz

Particle-laden flows appear in many fields, from biology and chemical engineering to geophysical and astrophysical applications. They are two-phase flows, consisting of a dispersed phase (such as sediments, droplets, or particles) interacting with a continuous carrier phase. These flows are complex to model, combining two challenging topics of fluid mechanics: turbulence and multi-phase flows. In this talk, I will look at how the effect of particle inertia (size of the particle) causes the clustering of particles within the flow. To do so, I will introduce the mathematical equations that make modeling these systems possible, and then, present the simulations in which we investigate these systems. For more information, http://web.sonoma.edu/math/