fluid-dynamics

Fracture is a sudden, brittle breaking-apart that we generally associate with solid materials that get stressed too far. Some viscoelastic, non-Newtonian fluids have been known to fracture, but that was generally thought to be unusual. But a recent study turns that idea on its head, revealing that even simple, albeit highly viscous, liquids can fracture. […]

There’s a connection between wave types that scientists once thought were fundamentally different.

Scientific Reports, Published online: 04 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41598-026-48193-z Semi-analytical investigation of nonlinear time-fractional fluid behavior with $$\phi$$-Caputo memory

_Scholarly Journal of Post-Biological Epistemics_. forthcomingWe introduce a coupled time-ratio system for incompressible Navier–Stokes on the periodic three-torus. The evolution is the pair (U, φ), where φ is a time diffeomorphism with rate φ'(τ) = dt/dτ, and τ is an auxiliary lifted clock. The rate is set by φ'(τ) = Φ(‖ω(τ)‖_{L^∞(T^3)}), ω = ∇ × U, U(x,τ) := u(x, φ(τ)), where Φ : R_{≥0} → [φ_mi…

Gravity, it turns out, is not simply a background condition of life. It’s more like a dial, one your nervous system is always reading, using the signal to decide whether to spend energy or save it. We know this in part because of what happened when researchers at the University of California, Riverside put fruit flies into a centrifuge and turned the dial up. Way up. At four times Earth’s normal …

Scientific Reports, Published online: 02 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41598-026-49946-6 Study on the influence of inducer and its guide vanes on cryogenic cavitation and pressure fluctuation characteristics of an LNG pump

Scientific Reports, Published online: 02 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41598-026-51224-4 Dynamic characteristics and structural response of a supercavitating underwater vehicle: an experimental and numerical study

The EmFlume1.5 is great for explaining common hydraulic phenomena in rivers. This demonstration introduces viewers to the transitions between supercritical and subcritical flow, and vice versa, and how they create some of the dynamic, impactful, and potentially dangerous points in river systems. Check it out here!

Across turbulence, neural networks, bioenergetics, chaos theory, and plasma physics, a recurring structural motif appears: localized coherence nodes organize global system behavior within dissipative environments. The Δ±1 framework proposes a cross-scale vocabulary for this convergence.

Equations of motion for a spinning spheroid [1] where implemented in a Blender Python script. 1. H. K. Moffatt, Y. Shimomura and M. Branicki 2004 Dynamics of an axisymmetric body spinning on a horizontal surface I. Stability and the gyroscopic approximation.

On a vibrating fluid, droplets can bounce and interact in complex ways. Here, researchers demonstrate some of the peculiar dynamics of these wave-guided droplets, showing how they can do things like pair up in waltzes. To keep the droplets from coalescing with one another, they perform their experiments in a pressurized chamber; the higher air […]

Scientific Reports, Published online: 29 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41598-026-50391-8 High spatial resolution of the rotational sensor array in the explosion sources localization

Flow visualization is both an art and science in fluid dynamics. Here, researchers were interested in studying the separation bubble that forms over a backward-facing ramp–a shape that shows up, for example, on an aircraft. In these areas, the flow over the surface separates, leaving an unsteady, recirculating bubble. That’s the flow that researchers are […]

I am studying the contact angle of a sessile droplet (water and alcohol mixtures) on both horizontal and inclined surfaces. I capture side-view images with a 24 MP Canon camera and analyze them with a CNN-based pipeline in Python. However, I have run into several issues: A 24 MP Canon... Read more

Research Flow in Porous Media A part of our research is dedicated to porous media related physics. On the one hand, we design experiments to study single and multiphase flow in permeable porous media. On the other hand, our experimental work focuses on fracture dynamics in ultra-low permeability porous media such as hydrogels and PMMA....

Congratulations to my friend and colleague Professor Stuart Laurence at the University of Maryland on his team’s publication Experimental study of fluid-thermal-structural interactions in a Mach-10 compression corner using super-ellipse-based photogrammetry in the Experiments in Fluids journal. Congratulations are also due to the entire NASA team, lead by Greg Buck, for their expertise in s…

Congratulations to former PhD student and now Dr. Sandeep Murthy on his publication of Resolvent Analysis for Shock-Laden Flows in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. Through detailed and inspired analysis, Sandeep shows how to properly interpret the input-output-gain structure of the linearized Navier-Stokes operator in the presence of a shock wave using inviscid, viscous, and […]

The Effect of Various Physical Processes on Gas Flows in the CGM. Speaker: Freeke van de Voort, Cardiff University The post DGCE SIG Seminar, 28 May 2026 appeared first on NASA Science .

Jupiter’s lightning storms are revealing extreme atmospheric physics that challenge what scientists thought they knew about how lightning works.

Inspired by gas and liquid flow in earth science, researchers brewed an equation to calculate the speed of water percolation through ground coffee.