Plasma/turbulence interaction

Air Force Office of Scientific research          Graduate Student: Shankar Ghosh

 

                  

The objective of this project is to answer fundamental questions concerning the interaction between plasmas and turbulent flows. Experimental work has shown that plasmas have the potential to reduce drag, and weaken shock waves in supersonic flows. However, physical understanding of the interaction process is lacking. This work is motivated by the fact that plasmas offer a means to directly control the interior of a turbulent flow, in contrast to most control techniques, that must be employed at the boundaries of the flow. Numerical simulations are used to study the interaction process in detail to isolate the physical effects of increased temperature, chemical reaction, and charged particles. Scaling laws that allow engineering prediction of the interaction will be developed in the long run. The figures show contours of density and velocity divergence from the simulations.

Publications

  • S. Ghosh & K. Mahesh, 2008
    DNS of the thermal effects of a laser-induced plasma in isotropic turbulence
    Submitted to Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

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