Abstract: Liquid droplets play a pivotal role in both environmental systems and industrial processes. Predicting the trajectory of those droplets and their interactions with the flow is essential to improve the performances of industrial processes and to better understand natural phenomena. We have investigated the force balance that is acting on spherical droplets and their implication on path instabilities. We used a combination of direct numerical simulations, experiments and theoretical analysis to better predict the history and the lift forces. An original scenario to the transition of oscillating trajectories has been evidenced in experiments and direct numerical simulations which involves an instability of the internal Hill’s vortex.
Bio: Prof. Éric Climent has twenty years of experience in teaching and research on numerical modelling and simulations of two-phase flows. He received his PhD in fluid mechanics in 1996. He was lecturer at the University of Strasbourg (1997–2001). Then, he moved to Brown University (USA.) as a visiting professor in the department of applied mathematics. He returned to Toulouse (France) in 2003 to carry out research in the chemical engineering laboratory (LGC – UMR 5503 CNRS-INPT-UPS) on the modelling of industrial processes involving two-phase flows. Since 2008, he is full Professor of fluid mechanics and has been a member of the Fluid Mechanics Institute (IMFT – UMR 5502 CNRS-INPT-UPS), developing his expertise on the modelling and simulation of disperse two-phase flows (suspension flow, solid/liquid separation, bubbles, and drops in turbulent flows). Eric Climent has supervised 35 PhD students and several post-docs and master students. He is co-author of more than 90 papers in international peer-reviewed journals on particulate flows, bubble and drop dynamics, active suspensions and liquid-solid separation techniques. He was visiting Professor at IIT Kharagpur (India) and in USA at Brown Univ. and MIT. He has continuously developed numerical tools and modelling approaches (DNS, LES and fully resolved particulate flows) for the simulation of dispersed two-phase flows dealing with academic topics and industrial applications in engineering.
Prof. Eric Climent was the Director of IMFT over the period 2016-2024 and is now heading an international research laboratory jointly affiliated to CNRS and Imperial College London (IRL 2035 ABEL on Engineering). E. Climent is member of the editorial advisory board of Int. J. of Multiphase Flows and Acta Mechanica Sinica. He was the chairperson of the ICMF 2025 (Int. Conf. on Multiphase Flows) which was held in Toulouse and welcomed 1200 attendees.