TALK    Skewness in the Passive Tracer Problem

Date & Time:

Monday, November 23, 2015; 12:00 PM

Abstract:

The classic work by G.I. Taylor describes the enhanced longitudinal diffusivity of a passive tracer subjected to laminar pipe flow. Much work since then has gone into extending this result particularly in calculating the evolution of the scalar variance. However, less work has been done to describe the evolution of asymmetry in the distribution. We present the results from a modeling effort to understand how the higher moments of the tracer distribution depend on geometry based off of explicit results in the circular pipe. We do this via analysis of "channel-limiting" geometries (rectangular ducts and elliptical pipes parameterized by their aspect ratio), using both new analytical tools and Monte Carlo simulation, which have revealed a wealth of nontrivial behavior of the distributions at short and intermediate time.

Speaker:

Manuchehr Aminian
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Manuchehr Aminian is from Denver, Colorado. He received his undergraduate with honors in mathematics at the University of Colorado Denver, and is currently a fifth year PhD student in the Department of Mathematics at UNC Chapel Hill. His research is primarily focused on passive tracer problems, under his advisors Roberto Camassa and Richard McLaughlin.