Transient Fluid Mechanics LaboratoryTechnion – Israel Institute of Technology

Transient Fluid Mechanics Laboratory

We study the physics of high-speed transient phenomena in single- and multiphase flows: shock waves, cavitation, bubble bursting and interfacial dynamics, where extreme acceleration, abrupt phase change or interfacial effects govern what happens next.

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Inside the Transient Fluid Mechanics Laboratory

About the lab

The Transient Fluid Mechanics Laboratory in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion studies industrial and natural processes that are either limited by, or rely on, highly transient phenomena in fluid mechanics: high accelerations, rapid phase changes and interfacial phenomena. We use recent advances in experimental techniques, and develop new ones, to build a fundamental understanding of flows whose complexity and vast range of spatial and temporal scales still limit our ability to model and predict them. The topics we study have far-reaching applications in energy, fluid and environmental systems.

Research

Compressible flows and shock waves

How moving shock waves reflect, diffract and recover when they meet area changes, constrictions and porous barriers inside ducts, studied in our automated shock tube with high-speed schlieren imaging and large-eddy simulation.

  • Shock waves through abrupt area changes

    How a normal shock recovers after an abrupt expansion or contraction in a duct, combining shock-tube experiments, large-eddy simulation and geometrical shock dynamics.

  • Shock interaction with local constrictions

    Systematic experiments and simulations of shocks passing through short constrictions, from abrupt rectangular blocks to smooth sinusoidal narrowings.

  • Shock waves and porous media

    Stiff porous media act as a first-order low-pass filter on the pressure pulse that follows a shock, which lets us predict the load on a protected wall without new experiments.

Multiphase and index-matched flows

Time-resolved, three-dimensional measurements of solids, bubbles and droplets in liquids, made possible by matching the refractive index of the fluid to the walls and particles so that four high-speed cameras can see the whole flow at once.

  • Inertial solids in high-speed pipe flow

    Time-resolved tomographic imaging in an index-matched pipe reveals how inertial spheres move through high Reynolds number flow and area changes.

  • Turbulence in round pipes across area changes

    Stereo and tomographic PIV of turbulent pipe flow through abrupt and gradual expansions and contractions, a simple geometry that is notoriously hard to image.

  • Tomo-PTV of buoyancy driven spheres

    How we measure the forces on a freely rising sphere that is optically invisible: index matching, a detection method built on the flow's fingerprints, and a reconstruction that respects the moving body.

  • Inception of attached cavitation

    Why attached cavitation on curved surfaces is insensitive to free-stream nuclei: microbubbles trapped near the wall keep seeding new events.

  • Oil–water separation and thin water films

    Water droplets crossing an oil–water interface are wrapped in a film that persists thousands of times longer than the crossing itself, with consequences for oil-spill dynamics.

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