Join Professor Lydia Bourouiba, MIT, for the final instalment in our 2025 Distinguished Seminar Series!
Title:
From unsteady fragmentation to phase change: fluid and bio-physics of/during dispersal
Abstract:
Fragmentation is ubiquitous for myriads of physical, chemical, and biological processes where beneficial compounds, contaminants, or microorganisms are carried in the liquid phase. This is true for products of a range of irrigation and spray systems, and also for wave breaking, bursting bubbles, impacting raindrops, or exhalations – all of which having the potential to be efficient sources of desired compound, or contaminant, microorganism-laden microdroplets. Our mechanistic understanding of how such compounds and microdroplets can sustainably disperse in the environment or in controlled processes remains woefully limited. We will highlight how studying such questions can lead to fundamentally new insights, and emergence of a broad class of relevant open fluid- and bio-physics problems, including those in which the unsteadiness of fragmentation, mixing, rheology, and phase change are at the core. And how in turn these fundamental processes begin to shed light on the entangled and interactions of physics, chemistry, and biology in shaping a range of industrial, health, and environmental processes.
Speaker biography:
Find out more.
To book:
This event is by calendar invite only. If you are interested in attending, please email chemeng.comms@imperial.ac.uk.
Attendance type:
In-person only.