Sometimes flying to a place is not very smooth, it gets bumpy at times. You might have heard about the term turbulence. This turbulence causes discomfort to the passengers in the flight. As the wind velocity increases, turbulence increases. Due to greater extent of this turbulence, instability of flight is caused which might put the flight out of its place and can cause structural damage.

Turbulence What Is It 

Fluid flows can be studied through streamlines, these are basically the velocity vectors through which the fluid flows. We call a fluid flow laminar when these vectors are parallel to each other, this is when the flow has no energy loss. However, when the fluid streamlines get mixed up or curled they form circular profiles called vortices or eddies. This phenomenon reduces the energy of the fluid flow by curling and dissipating energy as heat into the system.

The Physics Behind Turbulence 

But turbulence is not always bad, the unpredictability of this turbulent flow is what makes it beautiful. Everything in the universe starting from the giant red spot of Jupiter to the interstellar medium between the stars express themselves through turbulence.

Everything Is Turbulent 

Sometimes flying to a place is not very smooth, it gets bumpy at times. You might have heard about the term turbulence. This turbulence causes discomfort to the passengers in the flight. As the wind…

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

So, what is turbulence?

Reynold’s number, a dimensionless quantity Is used to define if a flow is turbulent or laminar or transient. Consider a fluid flowing over a surface, on the surface the velocity of the fluid particle is zero, and the fluid is experiencing some force trying to push it and then there is viscosity trying to resist this force. Inertia in this context is the inability of the fluid to stop moving and conform to viscosity, when inertia increases in the presence of momentum diffusion (viscous effect) or vice versa, this results in the eddies or vortices. Therefore, the ratio between the inertial force to the viscous force is important and hence, Reynold’s number came to be something that would quantize turbulence.

Nature is turbulent and long years of natural selection and evolution, have helped sharks to have turbulence inducing skins which makes the fluid sticks to its body to a greater extent thereby reducing flow separation, helping them move faster. This is now employed in the manufacture of swimsuits giving the wearer an unfair advantage over their competitors.

When turbulence is discussed, the aerodynamics of golf balls must also be discussed.

Golf is a sport in which the balls must be thrown to a longer possible extent which obviously means lower drag force and higher lift is required. The dimples in the golf ball create turbulence dissipating the energy of the air flow and reducing the size of the wake, a low-pressure region behind the ball. This makes golf balls aerodynamically efficient.

Turbulence can also be used as a phenomenon by which energy can be extracted, one such device that converts vortex rich energy to electricity is the gravitation induced vortex generator. As the name implies with the help of gravity tensor, fluid is allowed to flow in a conical chamber which swirls the fluid causing vortices and thereby turbine blades are employed to extract energy. This installation is about 73% in practicability and this proves to be a viable solution for fluid having lower heads, say 0.7 to 3 meters and helps the world in its course towards zero net carbon emission. There are many other devices in existence that uses turbulence in fluid to extract energy like Vivace, vortex bladeless etc.,

Laminar flow can be loved due to its smooth profile, this is why they can be used for aesthetics but once the truth about turbulence is known, one can see that it’s a beautiful phenomenon.

Turbulent flow is the rule, laminar flow is the exception- Derek Muller, Veritasium

Turbulence is pretty- Change my mind

Turbulence What Is It

The Physics Behind Turbulence

Everything Is Turbulent

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