Turbulence

Catalog description

Turbulence is commonly observed in everyday phenomena such as surf, fast flowing rivers, billowing storm clouds, or smoke from a chimney, and most fluid flows occurring in nature or created in engineering applications are turbulent. This course presents the complex properties of turbulence: Random vortical fluctuating structures over a large range of length- and time-scales. We will analyze the importance of turbulent mixing and transport of momentum in practical flows. Students will be exposed to the complex theoretical, numerical and experimental techniques used to describe and quantify the effects of turbulence. Particular attention will be given to applications of turbulence theory in astrophysics, including stellar physics and fluid-dynamics.