Fluid Lines

• Streamline
– everywhere tangent to instantaneous velocity vector
• Pathline
– actual path traversed by a fluid packet
• Streakline
– locus of fluid packets that have all previously passed
through a specific point in the flow
• Timeline
– set of fluid packets that form a line at some instant in
time

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 Hele-Shaw Flow

•Creeping flow: water with dye lines (streaklines)

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 Particle Trajectories in Periodic Water Waves
•Wave moving from left hitting (partially) reflected wave from right (pathlines)
Reflection

0%

50%

100%

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 Blausius Boundary Layer Profile

• Fine tellerurium wire +

few ms electrical
Wire impulse produces
chemical reaction in
water
• Cloud of product drifts
with tangential velocity
• Time line,
Visualize displacement
(velocity)
Wall

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 Planar Visualization of 2-D Mixing Layer

• 2-D flow in channel, higher velocity fluid on top

• Low speed fluid contains dye that fluoresces when hit by
vertical laser sheet (laser sheet visualization)
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 Airfoil Wake

•6:1 elliptical cylinder at zero angle of attack (Rechord=4000)

•Drop of TiCl4 (liquid) on surface forms white smoke as it
interacts with water vapor in the air
•Laminar boundary layer separates, forms wake, sheds
vortices
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 Delta Wing Vortices

•Thin wing, 15° semi-vertex at 20° angle of attack (Re=20,000)

•Lines of colored fluid injected from wing
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 Tanker Wake

• Grounded tanker (Argo Merchant, 1976)

• Oil spilling with current at 45° to ship
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 Turbulent Distortion of Material Lines

• Fine platinum wire in water tunnel behind turbulence grid

• Periodic pulsing produces double lines of H2 bubbles

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 Smoke Tunnel

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