Much of the drama and complexity of fluid flow occurs because its governing equations lack unique solutions. The observed behavior depends on the stability of the multitude of solutions, which can change with the experimental parameters. Instabilities cause sudden global shifts in behavior. We have developed a low-cost experiment to study a classical fluid instability. By using an electromagnetic technique, students drive Kolmogorov flow in a thin fluid layer and measure it quantitatively with a webcam. They extract positions and velocities from movies of the flow using Lagrangian particle tracking and compare their measurements to several theoretical predictions, including the effect of the drive current, the spatial structure of the flow, and the parameters at which instability occurs. The experiment can be tailored to undergraduates at any level or to graduate students by appropriate emphasis on the physical phenomena and the sophisticated mathematics that govern them.
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March 2011
PAPERS|
March 01 2011
Using particle tracking to measure flow instabilities in an undergraduate laboratory experiment
Douglas H. Kelley;
Douglas H. Kelley
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science,
Yale University
, New Haven, Connecticut 06520
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Nicholas T. Ouellette
Nicholas T. Ouellette
a)
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science,
Yale University
, New Haven, Connecticut 06520
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a)
Electronic mail: nicholas.ouellette@yale.edu
Am. J. Phys. 79, 267–273 (2011)
Article history
Received:
September 19 2010
Accepted:
December 07 2010
Citation
Douglas H. Kelley, Nicholas T. Ouellette; Using particle tracking to measure flow instabilities in an undergraduate laboratory experiment. Am. J. Phys. 1 March 2011; 79 (3): 267–273. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.3536647
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