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The UC3M wins the American Physical Society annual scientific video competition

12/3/18

Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) have won two of the three Milton van Dyke awards of the scientific video competition on fluid mechanics ‘Gallery of Fluid Motion’, which were awarded in the American Physical Society’s last meeting in Atlanta (United States).

Llama en blanco y negro y gota de agua en anís. Imágenes de los vídeos ganadores del Premio American Physical Society
 

The video “The shaky life of a water drop in an anise oil-rich environment”, made by the researchers from the UC3M Fluid Mechanics research group, Óscar Enríquez, Pablo Peñas-López and Javier Rodríguez-Rodríguez, was one of the winners of this international competition. The background music, a musical improvisation composed by Oscar Enríquez, is a musical trio made up of a clarinet, percussion and a violin that represent each of the three fluids.

“We had never seen anything like this, and we were quite surprised about what was happening”, comments Óscar Enríquez, lecturer from the UC3M Thermal and Fluids Engineering department and four times winner of the Gallery of Fluid Motion. “After several additional experiments, we observed that alcohol, somehow, allowed the anise oil to get inside the drop of water and form an emulsion (a collection of small drops of oil) within the drop. At the same time, the alcohol went in and mixed with the water, which caused the drop to grow, get less dense and be able to float”.

The other audio-visual piece from the UC3M that won the competition is called “Premixed flame oscillations in narrow channels”, and it was made by researchers Fernando Veiga López, Daniel Martínez Ruiz and Mario Sánchez Sanz, also from the Fluid Mechanics research group, and shows the effects of the fuel-air relationship in the form of a propane flame.  

When the fuel-air relationship of a flame in a reduced space is increased beyond a critical value, thanks to the acoustic waves that are activated within the recipient, the front of the flame experiences dramatic waves. The team says that the work is relevant for engines and combustion chambers in gas turbines, which often experience the so-called thermoacoustic oscillations that can affect their operation.

The ‘Gallery of Fluid Motion’ competition is held as part of the American Physical Society’s annual meeting, the most important in the world for fluid mechanics. This competition, which intends to use the images’ ability to mix science and art in such a way as to attract the general public’s attention on research topics, is largely inspired by “An Album of Fluid Motion”, a book with black and white photos published in 1982 by Stanford engineering professor, Milton Van Dyke, who died in 2010.

For more information:

Videos from the Gallery of Fluid Motion