RESEARCH DEPARTMENT OF VORTEX MOTIONS

     FROM THE HISTORY OF DEPARTMENT

    The department was established in 1990. Since its establishment until 1994 it was headed by Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Prof. V. V. Meleshko. Since 1994, the department is headed by Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences A. G. Stetsenko. Currently, the department has 15 employees, including eight researchers, including three Doctors and four Cnadidates of Sciences (PhD).

     RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

     The Department laboratory facilities of include the large and small experimental trays provided with a complex test equipment, allowing the carrying out of experimental studies of wave motion and dynamics of localized perturbations in a stratified media.

     The research activitiy of the Department is related to describing of the vortex motions being the most common type of motion in the nature. Their studying is essential for a wide range of scientific and engineering problems. In particular, the two types of such motion are investigated. The first one relates to the dynamics of vortex structure interaction in the process of liquid mixing in physical systems when the distributions of various scalar fields in fluid motion are perturbed, including the microfluidic microchannel. The second type of vortex motion is associated with the processes related to the turbulence, generation of internal waves by localized perturbations in a stratified medium, including the moving ones.

     The main scientific results obtained in the department are related to:

• studying of regularities of mixing processes in the velocity field with different spatial and temporal scales generated by a system of vortex structures in an ideal incompressible fluid, along with developing of efficient numerical models providing the results adequate to reality;
•      studying of principal laws of the chaotic and regular motions from the position of a model representation of real flows in an ideal incompressible fluid by vortex systems; investigation of mixing of passive liquid volumes in a limited three-dimensional Stokes flow induced by wall motion for both the large-scale motions and microfluidic flows in microchannels;
•     studying of dynamics and fields of internal waves in forced stationary and non-stationary motion of localized vortices in stratified media; studying of evolution dynamics of mixed areas and compact three-dimensional vortices in stratified media;
• studying of the Taylor-G?rtler vortex dynamics at curved surfaces and main regularities of the process of passive additive mixing in a transitional boundary layer with the G?rtler vortices.

     The investigations of evolution hydrodynamics and interaction of vortex structures in stratified media open the opportunities for implementing of obtained results in modern engineering and scientific developments in the petroleum, chemical, pharmaceutical, food industry, forecasting of the top layer of seas and oceans, environmental assessment of water basins, etc.

    The scientific results were obtained, in particular, in cooperation with foreign scientific centers in the USA, the Netherlands, Italy, and in the course of international projects and agreements.

     Over the period of 1990 to 2012, the employees of the department have written three research monographs (one of them, in Russia) and more than 200 articles, many of which have been published in the top-rated international journals.