MEAM Seminar: “Lagrangian Stretching: A New Lens on Complex Fluid Flows”
September 22 at 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM
Details
Organizer
Venue
Viscoelastic flows are common in many natural and industrial applications, such as biofilm transport, drug delivery, and enhanced oil recovery. The stretching of polymeric chains in viscoelastic flows induces elastic instability, which manifests in symmetry-breaking, time-dependent flows, and anomalous transport properties. The knowledge of the polymeric stress field is essential for understanding transport in viscoelastic flows because the topology of the polymeric stress field controls the flow states and dynamics in viscoelastic flows. However, the experimental measurements of the stress field are challenging. Through analytical and numerical analyses, we obtain a relationship between the polymeric stress field and the Lagrangian stretching field. The Lagrangian stretching field depends solely on the flow kinematics, which is relatively easy to measure in the experiment. Thus, our result establishes a simple framework to unveil the topology of the polymeric stress field directly from readily measurable flow field data, even for strongly viscoelastic and unstable flows.
Speaker
Arezoo M. Ardekani
Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University
Arezoo Ardekani is Associate Head for Faculty Affairs and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. Her research integrates fluid mechanics, complex fluids, soft matter, and transport to uncover the fundamental physics governing biological systems, biomedical and energy applications. Ardekani is a Fellow of AAAS, APS, AIMBE, and ASME. She received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the NSF CAREER Award, the Arthur B. Metzner Early Career Award from the Society of Rheology, the Society of Engineering Science Young Investigator Medal, the Sigma Xi Mid-Career Research Award, and was inducted into the University of California, Irvine Engineering Hall of Fame. She has published more than 200 journal articles and mentored eighty graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, many of whom now hold faculty and research leadership positions. She serves as Associate Editor of Physical Review Fluids and previously served as Associate Editor of ASME Applied Mechanics Reviews. She served on the advisory boards of Physics of Fluids and the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics. She co-chaired the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics Annual Meeting held in Indianapolis and has served on numerous national award committees and professional society leadership boards. She served as a member-at-large of the executive committee for the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics and a governing board member of the International Conference on Multiphase Flows. She is currently serving as the member-at-large of the executive committee of the society of rheology and is the co-chair of the technical committee for the 2026 society of rheology annual meeting.