Turbulent Flow of Two Immiscible Liquids Moving Inside a Channel

In this talk, I will consider the problem of two immiscible liquids, with same density but different viscosity, flowing inside a channel. I will start with the case of a lubricated channel (i.e. a flow configuration in which a thin layer of a less-viscous fluid is injected near the wall of a plane channel so to lubricate the flow of a more-viscous fluid), and I will discuss the influence of viscosity and surface tension on the overall friction and on the corresponding drag reduction mechanism.Then I will focus more carefully on the dynamics of the liquid-liquid interface. In the present set-up, waves are naturally forced by turbulence over a broad range of scales. After an initial transient, a stationary capillary wave regime is observed, which I will characterize by means of temporal and spatial spectra, and I will discuss in the framework of the wave turbulence theory.

Dr. Francesco Zonta graduated in Mechanical Engineering in 2006 at the University of Udine, where he also completed his PhD in 2010. From 2010 to 2016 he has been Research Assistant at the University of Udine and at the University of Torino. In 2016 he became senior University assistant at Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer of the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). In 2022, he was promoted Senior Scientist at the same institute. He has been visiting scholar at the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne (EPFL, 2008), at the University Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC, 2014), and at the University of Adelaide (2019). Dr. Francesco Zonta has obtained a number of grants for HPC (High Performance Computing) applications, and he has been the recipient of the ‘’Ermanno Grinzato’’ prize awarded by AIPT (Italian Association for Thermophysical Properties, 2013). Since 2023, he is managing editor of International Journal of Multiphase Flows (IJMF). His research focuses on turbulence, heat transfer, multiphase flows and computational fluid dynamics.