Mixing Enhancement in Stirred Binary Fluids by Professor Peter Schmid

Abstract: The mixing of binary fluids by stirrers for intermediate Reynolds and Peclet numbers will be used to demonstrate the
capability of optimisation techniques to manipulate the behaviour of complex fluid flow. Using a Brinkman-style penalisation
methodology, a Fourier-spectral Navier-Stokes solver and a nonlinear direct-adjoint looping technique, we show that
significantly enhanced mixing can be accomplished, when measured by an appropriate cost functional. Given a finite energy
budget and a restricted time horizon, various mixing strategies (beyond Taylor dispersion) and their interplay will be discussed.
Particular emphasis will be given to the convergence behaviour and the importance of side constraints during the optimisation.
Remaining challenges and opportunities will be pointed out as well.

Biosketch: Peter Schmid currently holds a Chair Professorship of Applied Mathematics and Mathematical
Physics at the Department of Mathematics of Imperial College London. Before joining the department in
2013, he held a position of research director with the French National Research Agency (CNRS) and a
professorship (PCC) at the Ecole Polytechnique in France. Before then, he was a faculty member in
Applied Mathematics at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. He received his Ph.D. in
Mathematics from M.I.T. and his Engineer's Degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Technical
University Munich. His research lies in the area of computational fluid dynamics, with emphasis on
stability theory, receptivity analysis, flow control, model reduction and system identification. He is also
interested in methods for quantitative flow analysis for numerical and experimental data.

Date/Time:
Date(s) - Feb 14, 2019
12:00 am - 1:00 pm

Location:
38-138 Engineering IV
420 Westwood Plaza Los Angeles CA 90095