Fascinating fluid mechanics
From: WebEcoist:
http://webecoist.com/2009/07/24/10-magnificent-maelstroms-and-destructive-whirlpools/
From:
http://runnindane.blogspot.com/2009/02/vortex.html
“A vortex can be seen in the spiraling motion of air or liquid around a center of rotation. Circular current of water of conflicting tides form vortex shapes. Turbulent flow makes many vortices. A good example of a vortex is the atmospheric phenomenon of a whirlwind or a tornado or dust devil. This whirling air mass mostly takes the form of a helix, column, or spiral. Tornadoes develop from severe thunderstorms, usually spawned from squall lines and supercell thunderstorms, though they sometimes happen as a result of a hurricane.”
-Wikipedia
Gallery of Flow Visualization from the U. of Colorado
Absolutely amazing photos on Flickr:
Beautiful picture of breaking waves from Imperial College:
from http://www.flickr.com/photos/8720628@N04/595482265/
the photostream of Fractal Artist
From: http://blogist.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/smokin/
rusr7247.jpg |
AYVAZOVSKY Ivan | The Wave. | c.1889 | Russian | Romantic |
Oil on Canvas |
Russia. |
|
©Kathleen Cohen |
Your current search criteria is: Sea and Waterscapes
http://worldimages.sjsu.edu/VieO56817$30486*3630105
Nigel Gorbold, Lok Kin Lee, Christopher McCray, Taylor Simonson, Melissa Talmage
A jet in crossflow
exhibits a shear instability. Visualized with dye in a flume.
Lindsey Wohlman
Dense, falling droplets of food coloring form vortex rings due to the Rayliegh-Taylor instability.
47 Photo project presents great “fluid” photos:
From Album of Flow Visualization, THTLab, the Uni. of Tokyo
When coffee meets milk
from Prof. T.T. Lim gallery [link]
notice the entrainment 🙂
from LiveScience
from the online version of the Van Dyke’s Album of Fluid Motion [my post has a link]
from http://www.eng.vt.edu/fluids/msc/gallery/gall.htm
http://www.eng.vt.edu/fluids/msc/gallery/gall.htm
Cerebrospinal fluid, visualized in a laser light by fluorescent particles. Image is taken in IfU lab.
Jet in the cross-flow or simply the fountain on the lake of Geneve:
The physics of a tennis ball, watch the movies and see the wakes of spinning balls as compared to the non-spinning ones.
In addition to this post, the Art of Science competition also includes the beatiful visualization of:
Wake of a Pitching Plate
James Buchholz GS and Alexander Smits
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
These images contain top and side views of the wake produced by a rigid plate pitching about its leading edge in a uniform flow (flowing left to right). The leading edge of the plate is hinged to the trailing edge of a stationary symmetric airfoil. The wake is visualized using fluorescent dyes that are introduced through a series of holes on each side of the airfoil support. Twice in each flapping cycle, a horseshoe-shaped vortex is shed from the top, bottom, and trailing edges. The vortices become entangled to form the chain-like structure shown here. Studying such wakes is believed to be important for understanding the mechanisms of thrust production in fish-like swimming.
Tornado pictures:
an example from http://www.weatherstock.com/tornadocat3.html#TTT00
Filtered Luminosity photograph of bow shock detached to a Mars Pathfinder aero shell model, scaled down 1:25.6 and measured in X3 Expansion tube of the Centre for Hypersonics in the the University of Queensland. The flow properties : Mach 10, 8.1 km/s and the photo is made by one of our recent PyPIV/URAPIV users: Dwishen Ramanah (you can ask me for his contact e-mail).
Sand storm in Iraq (the source is here)
The “steam rings” are about 200m across from Etna (2000) see the original link on BBC
or look at the beautiful Stromboli online
From the Gallery of fluid motion on www.EFluids.com – tip vortex behind an airplane:
Beatiful photos of smoke by Graham Jeffery: Coloured smoke
one example:
Airsmoke group on Flickr.com
http://www.flickr.com/groups/artsmoke/
One more from Flickr (press on image to see the original one).
Off-axis Vortex Ring Collisions

Hi, do you have a reference for the nice jet instability modes?
Thx in advance,
Ferramis
Nothing that I can recall at the moment
These really are beautiful flows Alex! I like fluid dynamics too much especially the numerical side with the nice colors. I believe that fluid dynamics is present everywhere in our life. Understanding the mechanisms of turbulent flow is considered as a challenging aspect of this discipline. I think that turbulent transport and particles in turbulence are one of the most important research areas dealing with turbulence.