Turbulence anisotropy and the SO3 description.

We study strongly turbulent windtunnel flows with controlled anisotropy. Using a recent formalism based on angular momentum and the irreducible representations of the SO(3) rotation group, we attempt to extract this anisotropy from the angular dependence of second-order structure functions. Our instrumentation allows a measurement of both the separation and the angle dependence of the structure function. In axisymmetric turbulence which has a weak anisotropy, this more extended information produces ambiguous results. In more strongly anisotropic shear turbulence, the SO(3) description enables one to find the anisotropy scaling exponent. The key quality of the SO(3) description is that structure functions are a mixture of algebraic functions of the scale with exponents ordered such that the contribution of anisotropies diminishes at small scales. However, we find that in third-order structure functions of homogeneous shear turbulence the anisotropic contribution is always large and of the same order of magnitude as the isotropic part. Our results concern the minimum instrumentation needed to determine the parameters of the SO(3) description, and raise several questions about its ability to describe the angle dependence of high-order structure functions.

Turbulent wakes of fractal objects.

Turbulence of a windtunnel flow is stirred using objects that have a fractal structure. The strong turbulent wakes resulting from three such objects which have different fractal dimensions are probed using multiprobe hot-wire anemometry in various configurations. Statistical turbulent quantities are studied within inertial and dissipative range scales in an attempt to relate changes in their self-similar behavior to the scaling of the fractal objects.

Electrowetting-driven oscillating drops sandwiched between two substrates.

Drops sandwiched between two substrates are often found in lab-on-chip devices based on digital microfluidics. We excite azimuthal oscillations of such drops by periodically modulating the contact line via ac electrowetting. By tuning the frequency of the applied voltage, several shape modes can be selected one by one. The frequency of the oscillations is half the frequency of the contact angle modulation by electrowetting, indicating a parametric excitation. The drop response to sinusoidal driving deviates substantially from sinusoidal behavior in a "stop and go" fashion. Although our simple theoretical model describes the observed behavior qualitatively, the resonances appear at lower frequencies than expected. Moreover, the oscillations produce a nonperiodic fluid transport within the drop with a typical velocity of 1 mm/s. In digital microfluidic devices, where the typical drop size is less than 1 mm, this flow can result in very fast mixing on the spot.

Capillary Stokes drift: a new driving mechanism for mixing in AC-electrowetting.

We studied the flow fields generated inside sessile drops that oscillate periodically between states of high and low contact angle under the influence of alternating electric fields of variable frequency and amplitude. Following the motion of dye patches, we show that the number of oscillation cycles required to achieve mixing scales logarithmically with the Péclet number as expected for chaotic mixing. High speed movies reveal an asymmetry of the drop shape between the spreading and receding phase of the oscillations. This results in net internal flow fields that we characterize by tracing the motion of colloidal seed particles. The strength and frequency dependence of the flow are explained in terms of Stokes drift driven by capillary waves that emanate from the oscillating contact line.

Electrowetting-induced oil film entrapment and instability.

We investigate the spreading at variable rate of a water drop on a smooth hydrophobic substrate in an ambient oil bath driven by electrowetting. We find that a thin film of oil is entrapped under the drop. Its thickness is described by an extension of the Landau-Levich law of dip coating that includes the electrostatic pressure contribution. Once trapped, the thin film becomes unstable under the competing effects of the electrostatic pressure and surface tension and dewets into microscopic droplets, in agreement with a linear stability analysis. Our results recommend electrowetting as an efficient experimental approach to the fundamental problem of dynamic wetting in the presence of a tunable substrate-liquid interaction.

Small scale velocity jumps in shear turbulence.

We measure structure functions and structures in uniformly sheared strong turbulence using an array of hot-wire velocity sensors. We find that the large-scale shear persists down to the smallest scales. There is a marked asymmetry between velocity increments measured in the shear direction, and those measured in the plane perpendicular to it. In the shear direction the scaling exponents tend to a constant, signifying the presence of small-scale cliffs. Direct evidence for those is presented by the spatial structure of the strongest velocity gradients.