U.S.-Switzerland Cooperative Research on Instabilities in Flows with Strongly Temperature Dependent Viscosity

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This award supports Professor Moshe Matalon of Northwestern University to collaborate in a study of fluid dynamics with Professor Philippe Metzener of the Mathematics Department of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL). The goal of their research is to gain fundamental understanding of the basic mechanisms of instability in liquids for which viscosity depends strongly on temperature. They will examine in detail two important physical mechanisms of instability: thermal instability that arises when a fluid layer is heated from below, and shear instability. The collaborators bring complementary strengths in applied mathematics to the proposed research, which involves mathematical modeling, mathematical analysis and numerical calculations. Professor Matalon's strengths are in mathematical analysis. He has expertise in asymptotic and perturbation methods derived from work on combustion problems and the mathematical modeling of chemically reacting flow problems. Professor Metzener has extensive experience studying problems of convection; he and his research group have strong computational and numerical skills. Most previous work on instabilities in fluid flows has assumed a constant viscosity in the fluid. While this has produced useful basic information, it is recognized that instabilities will be modified if the viscosity varies with temperature. Such is the case in many real world systems, ranging from the movement of magma below the surface of the earth to the processing of industrially important polymers. Thus the results of this research will have a broad range of applications.