event
Tuesday 10 Nov 2020: How jets and eddies influence the speed of propagation of plankton blooms: an idealised view
Dr Alexandra Tzella - University of Birmingham
Zoom 13:30-14:30
We investigate the influence of flows on the propagation of chemical pulsating fronts evolving inside an infinite channel domain. We focus on the sharp front obtained in Fisher--Kolmogorov--Petrovskii--Piskunov (FKPP) type models in the limit of small molecular diffusivity and fast reaction (large Peclet and Damkohler numbers). This problem arises naturally in oceanographic applications when studying interacting chemical or biological species, such as plankton in the ocean. We introduce a new formulation that expresses the front speed in terms of trajectories minimising the time of travel across a characteristic length scale of the flow subject to a time-averaged constraint that depends on both the Peclet and Damkohler numbers. We calculate the front speed for a flow consisting of an infinite array of vortices rotating in alternating directions and investigate how this changes in the presence of a jet (in collaboration with J. Vanneste, University of Edinburgh).
Meeting access details:
https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/j/97032441633?pwd=Z2VVTk1rU0x4dmVzSXVUVnplZnBPQT09
Meeting ID: 970 3244 1633
Password: 000582
