FM22L_12326:Thu:0930:327
XXI International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
Warsaw, Poland, August 15-21, 2004

Mixing Is an Aggregation Process

E. Villermaux (1), J. Duplat (2)
1. IRPHE, France
2. IUSTI, France


Experiments show how a stirred scalar mixture relaxes towards uniformity through an aggregation process. The elementary bricks are stretched sheets whose rates of diffusive smoothing and coalescence build up the overall mixture concentration distribution. The cases studied in particular include mixtures in two and three dimensions, with different stirring protocols and Reynolds numbers which all lead to a unique family of concentration distributions stable by self-convolution, the signature of the aggregation mechanism from which they originate.



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