JFM

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JFM Q&A with Yongyun Hwang

Professor Yongyun Hwang, Imperial College London has recently been appointed as an editorial board member of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. To celebrate, Yongyun participated in a Q&A with the Journal.

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JFM Rapids: The Editors’ Insights

A spotlight on JFM Rapids, a well-established section in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics [JFM] that continues to provide a highly visible venue for short, high-quality, articles addressing timely research challenges of broad interest. In this collection, the Editors of JFM Rapids each explain why they selected one article that presents exciting results with exceptional impact on currently active fluid mechanics research.

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When the Levee Forms

Blues fans out there may be familiar with the Led Zeppelin classic ‘When the Levee Breaks’, but what about when the levee forms? In particular, how do natural levees form in such an organised and well-engineered process?

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Fluids Writing Competition – now open!

Are you passionate about fluid mechanics and its applications? Are you looking to develop your writing skills and engage with an audience that's just as enthusiastic on the subject as you are? We have the competition for you.

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Watch: Underwater Robots based on the Loch Ness Monster

Current underwater vehicles are either difficult to manoeuvre making them unsuitable for sensitive work, or are extremely expensive. Gabe Weymouth and his team at the University of Southampton are designing new underwater robots based on the Plesiosaur – the dinosaur behind the legend of the Loch Ness Monster – which are much smaller, cheaper and more energy efficient.…

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Watch: How Do Snakes Catch Their Prey Underwater?

When catching prey underwater snakes use two main techniques: the frontal strike and the lateral strike. By studying real snakes in the lab at ESPCI/MNHN, Marion Segall was able to recreate the setup using a 3D-printed snake head and laser visualisation techniques, which allowed for the forces involved in each strike to be measured.…

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Batchelor Prize 2020

Congratulations to Alexander J. Smits on being awarded the 2020 Batchelor Prize ‘for seminal contributions to our understanding of the structure of wall turbulence at very large Reynolds and Mach numbers, especially through the design of innovative experiments and measurement devices, and also for pioneering work on bio-inspired propulsion and on drag reduction using modified surfaces’.…

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Watch: Tracking Beetles using the Sound of their Wings

The Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle is an invasive species that if left alone would decimate citrus crops across California. To prevent this from happening, John Allen and his team at the University of Hawai’i have been working to hunt the insects down before they are able to reach the West Coast of the USA.…

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Watch: How to Reduce Drag when Cycling

Cyclists can use up to 90% of their energy overcoming drag, which was the motivation behind the work of Ivaylo Nedyalkov at the University of New Hampshire, who was able to measure the force on each individual cyclist in a train formation to determine the best position to reduce your overall drag.…

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Watch: Levitating Objects on an Air Table

Air-tables create a thin film of air capable of supporting objects and causing them to levitate. By adding grooves to the table or the object, Professor John Hinch at the University of Cambridge was able to control the objects motion and describe the resultant acceleration in terms of a simple scaling relationship involving gravity and the aspect ratio.…

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Watch: How do Bubbles Freeze?

Freezing bubbles are not only beautiful, but also demonstrate incredibly complex physics. Here, Professor Jonathan Boreyko explains how bubbles freeze with examples of slow motion videos filmed in his laboratory at Virginia Tech.…

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Watch: How Strong is an Avalanche?

Measuring the forces present in an avalanche using light. Amalia Thomas from the University of Cambridge explains how to measure the forces between colliding particles in an avalanche based on their photo-elastic response and refractive index.

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Watch: Brazil Nut Effect in Avalanches and Cereal

The brazil nut effect describes the movement of large particles to the top of a container after shaking. The same effect also occurs in avalanches where large blocks of ice and rocks are seen on the surface, and in a box of cereal where the large pieces migrate to the top and the smaller dusty particles remain at the bottom.

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Watch: How does stone skipping work?

By bouncing elastic spheres across the surface of Bear Lake in Utah, researchers have discovered the physics behind stone skipping. The mechanism of ‘water walking’ occurs when a deformed sphere rotates continuously across the surface of the water giving the appearance that the sphere is literally walking on water.…

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JFM Symposia China: Beijing

The third and final event of the JFM China Symposia was held at Tsinghua University in Beijing with a record attendance of over 300 delegates representing the full-scope of academic profiles, from professors to undergraduate students.…

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JFM Symposia China: Hangzhou

The JFM China Symposia visited the second city of the tour at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. Another action-packed day of scientific talks began with a fitting reference to the foundation of JFM by George Batchelor, courtesy of Keith Moffatt1: “Until 1956 there was no journal that was devoted to fluid dynamics in all its experimental and theoretical aspects, papers in fluid dynamics being widely spread over the literature of engineering, physics and mathematics.

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JFM Symposia China: Shenzhen

The first JFM Symposia in China began today in Shenzhen with an opening from the President of Southern University of Science and Technology, Shiyi Chen, praising the prestige and reputation of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics as he welcomed us to the futuristic Shenzhen campus. …

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JFM Symposia 2017: Lab visits video

In addition to the full-day symposia in Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai for the 2017 JFM Symposia in India, editorial board members of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics also conducted lab visits in each of the three cities.…

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Tornadoes, Fire and Ice

Listening to tornadoes to increase warning times and save lives, studying the effect of ice on the combustion of oil spills, and investigating how sea ice affects our climate – discover the latest research in Fluid Dynamics.…

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CO2 beneath our feet

Climate change is currently one of the biggest threats to human existence. Carbon sequestration – the storage of CO2 underground – is one innovative method that could help to reduce the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere and ultimately save the human species.…

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Bees, Squid and Oil Plumes

Spring has almost sprung which means we’re taking a look at the fluid dynamics of bees, how to build squid-inspired robots and modelling oil plumes eight years on from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.…

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JFM Symposium – Chennai

Dr. Tom Crawford, the Social Media Editor for JFM, documents the final leg of the first-ever JFM Symposia: From Fundamentals to Applied Fluid Mechanics that took place in the three Indian cities of Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai in December 2017.…

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JFM Symposium – Mumbai

Dr. Tom Crawford, the Social Media Editor for JFM, documents the start of the first-ever JFM Symposia: From Fundamentals to Applied Fluid Mechanics that took place in the three Indian cities of Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai in December 2017.…

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JFM Symposium Bangalore

As the Social Media Editor for JFM, I was kindly asked to document the first-ever JFM Symposia: From Fundamentals to Applied Fluid Mechanics that took place in the three Indian cities of Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai in December 2017.…

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Nanofibres in a spin

Nano-materials are seen as the future in fields as diverse as medicine, technology and chemistry, but the methods used to create them are not yet fully understood.…

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Understanding Vortex Reconnection

A new paper published recently in Journal of Fluid Mechanics (JFM) looked at numerical simulations of a blade slicing through a vortex and understanding how this action affects the flow field could lead to the design of safer helicopters.

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How do birds fly?

When a bird flaps its wings it generates thrust force which keeps it airborne, but how does this actually work? And how hard and how fast should they flap?

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Goldstein wins Batchelor Prize 2016

The G K Batchelor Prize for 2016 is awarded to Professor Raymond E. Goldstein FRS, Schlumberger Professor of Complex Physical Systems in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and Fellow of Churchill College, University of Cambridge.

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Stone wins Batchelor Prize 2008

Batchelor prize winner interview Harvard professor’s research recognised by international community An interview with Professor Howard Stone, winner of the Batchelor Prize for Fluid Mechanics Professor Howard Stone, Vicky Joseph Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University is the winner of the inaugural Batchelor Prize for Fluid Mechanics.…

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