Cahn-Hilliard-Navier-Stokes Investigations of Binary-Fluid Turbulence and Droplet Dynamics

Abstract

The study of finite-sized, deformable droplets adverted by turbulent flows is an active area of research. It spans many streams of sciences and engineering, which include chemical engineering, fluid mechanics, statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics, and also biology. Advances in experimental techniques and high-performance computing have made it possible to investigate the properties of turbulent fluids laden with droplets. The main focus of this thesis is to study the statistical properties of the dynamics of such finite-size droplets in turbulent flows by using direct numerical simulations (DNSs). The most important feature of the model we use is that the droplets have a back-reaction on the advecting fluid: the turbulent fluid affects the droplets and they, in turn, affect the turbulence of the fluid. Our study uncovers (a) statistical properties that characterize the spatiotemporal evolution of droplets in turbulent flows, which are statistically homogeneous and isotropic, and (b) the modification of the statistical properties of this turbulence by the droplets. This thesis is divided into seven Chapters. Chapter 1 contains an introduction to the background material that is required for this thesis, especially the details about the equations we use; it also contains an outline of the problems we study in subsequent Chapters. Chapter 2 contains our study of “Droplets in Statistically Homogeneous Turbulence: From Many Droplets to a few Droplets”. Chapter 3 is devoted to our study of “Coalescence of Two Droplets”. Chapter 4 deals with “Binary-Fluid Turbulence: Signatures of Multifractal Droplet Dynamics and Dissipation Reduction”. Chapter 5 deals with “A BKM-type theorem and associated computations of solutions of the three-dimensional Cahn-Hilliard-Navier-Stokes equations”. Chapter 6 is devoted to our study of “Turbulence-induced Suppression of Phase Separation in Binary-Fluid Mixtures”. Chapter 7 is devoted to our study of “Antibubbles: Insights from the Cahn-Hilliard-Navier-Stokes Equations”.