Turbulent Fluid Interfaces and Mixing Efficiency: Dynamics, Optimization, and Regularization
In many fluid engineering devices, improved design and performance require knowledge of the dynamics of turbulent fluid interfaces. Depending on the device, and the application, the performance may be more sensitive to the large scales or the small scales of the interfaces. We distinguish between cases depending on whether the surface area of, or the volume enclosed by, the interfaces is practically more relevant. For turbulent interfaces, the surface area is dominated by the small scales whereas the volume enclosed is dominated by the large scales. We examine the interfacial dynamics in separated flows and we demonstrate the differences in the area-volume behavior in the context of mixing. Resolution effects on the interfacial behavior reveal that the mixing efficiency is strongly dominated by the large-scale interfacial properties. This has broad implications, at least for fluid-mixing devices, for the development of flow-prediction and flow-control techniques.