Chaotic advection and targeted mixing.

Topological Mixing in Three-Dimensional Porous Media

The topological complexity inherent to all porous media can impart complicated transport dynamics under steady flow conditions. Recently, it has been established [2] that such topological complexity imparts ubiquitous and persistent chaotic advection via a 3D fluid mechanical analogue of the baker’s map. In the presence of molecular diffusion, chaotic Lagrangian dynamics are well-known to impar...

Chaotic mixing in thermocapillary-driven microdroplets

Liquid microdroplets represent a convenient system for studies of mixing by chaotic advection in discrete microscopic volumes. The mixing properties of the flows in microdroplets are governed by their symmetries, which give rise to invariant surfaces serving as barriers to transport. Thorough mixing via chaotic advection requires destruction of all such invariant surfaces. To illustrate this id...

Targeted mixing in an array of alternating vortices.

Transport and mixing properties of passive particles advected by an array of vortices are investigated. Starting from the integrable case, it is shown that a special class of perturbations allows one to preserve separatrices which act as effective transport barriers, while triggering chaotic advection. In this setting, mixing within the two dynamical barriers is enhanced while long range transp...

Chaotic Advection Enhanced Remediation

Optically Controlled Mixing in Microdroplets

Liquid microdroplets represent a convenient system for studies of mixing by chaotic advection in discrete microscopic volumes. The mixing properties of the flows in microdroplets are governed by their symmetries, which give rise to invariant surfaces serving as barriers to transport. Complete three-dimensional mixing by chaotic advection requires destruction of all flow invariants. To illustrat...