Turbulence is ubiquitous in nature yet even for the case of ordinary Newtonian fluids like water our understanding of this phenomenon is limited. Many liquids of practical importance however are more complicated (e.g. blood, polymer melts or paints), they exhibit elastic as well as viscous characteristics and the relation between stress and strain is nonlinear. We here demonstrate for a model system of such complex fluids that at high shear rates turbulence is not simply modified as previously believed but it is suppressed and replaced by a new type of disordered motion, elasto-inertial turbulence (EIT). EIT is found to occur at much lower Reynolds numbers than Newtonian turbulence and the dynamical properties differ significantly. In particular the drag is strongly reduced and the observed friction scaling resolves a longstanding puzzle in non-Newtonian fluid mechanics regarding the nature of the so-called maximum drag reduction asymptote. Theoretical considerations imply that EIT will arise in complex fluids if the extensional viscosity is sufficiently large

In shear flows, turbulence first occurs in the form of localized structures (puffs/spots) surrounded by laminar fluid. We here investigate such spatially intermittent flows in a pipe experiment showing that turbulent puffs have a well-defined interaction distance, which sets their minimum spacing as well as the maximum observable turbulent fraction. Two methodologies are employed. Starting from a laminar flow, puffs are first created by locally injecting a jet of fluid through the pipe wall. When the perturbation is applied periodically at low frequencies, as expected, a regular sequence of puffs is observed where the puff spacing is given by the ratio of the mean flow speed to the perturbation frequency. At large frequencies however puffs are found to interact and annihilate each other. Varying the perturbation frequency, an interaction distance is determined which sets the highest possible turbulence fraction. This enables us to establish an upper bound for the friction factor in the transitional regime, which provides a well-defined link between the Blasius and the Hagen-Poiseuille friction laws. In the second set of experiments, the Reynolds number is reduced suddenly from fully turbulent to the intermittent regime. The resulting flow reorganizes itself to a sequence of constant size puffs which, unlike in Couette and Taylor-Couette flow are randomly spaced. The minimum distance between the turbulent patches is identical to the puff interaction length. The puff interaction length is found to be in agreement with the wavelength of regular stripe and spiral patterns in plane Couette and Taylor-Couette flow.

Bacterial suspensions-a premier example of active fluids-show an unusual response to shear stresses. Instead of increasing the viscosity of the suspending fluid, the emergent collective motions of swimming bacteria can turn a suspension into a superfluid with zero apparent viscosity. Although the existence of active superfluids has been demonstrated in bulk rheological measurements, the microscopic origin and dynamics of such an exotic phase have not been experimentally probed. Here, using high-speed confocal rheometry, we study the dynamics of concentrated bacterial suspensions under simple planar shear. We find that bacterial superfluids under shear exhibit unusual symmetric shear bands, defying the conventional wisdom on shear banding of complex fluids, where the formation of steady shear bands necessarily breaks the symmetry of unsheared samples. We propose a simple hydrodynamic model based on the local stress balance and the ergodic sampling of nonequilibrium shear configurations, which quantitatively describes the observed symmetric shear-banding structure. The model also successfully predicts various interesting features of swarming vortices in stationary bacterial suspensions. Our study provides insights into the physical properties of collective swarming in active fluids and illustrates their profound influences on transport processes.

Droplet deposition after impact on superhydrophobic surfaces has been an important area of study in recent years due to its potential application in reduction of pesticides usage. Minute amounts of long chain polymers added to water has been known to arrest the droplet rebound effect on superhydrophobic surfaces. Previous studies have attributed different reasons like extensional viscosity, dominance of elastic stresses or slowing down of contact line in retraction phase due to stretching of polymer chains. The present study attempts to unravel the existence of critical criteria of polymer concentration and impact velocity on the inhibition of droplet rebound. The impact velocity will indirectly influence the shear rate during the retraction phase, and the polymer concentration dictates the relaxation timescale of the elastic fluids. Finally we show that the Weissenberg number (at onset of retraction), which quantifies both the elastic effects of polymer chains and the hydrodynamics, is the critical parameter in determining the regime of onset of rebound suppression, and that there exists a critical value which determines the onset of bounce arrest. The previous three causes, which are manifestations of elastic effects in non-Newtonian fluids, can be related with the proposed Weissenberg number criterion.

The study reports the aspects of post-impact hydrodynamics of ferrofluid droplets on superhydrophobic (SH) surfaces in the presence of a horizontal magnetic field. A wide gamut of dynamics was observed by varying the impact Weber number (We), the Hartmann number (Ha) and the magnetic field strength (manifested through the magnetic Bond number (Bo m )). For a fixed We~60, we observed that at moderately low Bo m ~300, droplet rebound off the SH surface is suppressed. The noted We is chosen to observe various impact outcomes and to reveal the consequent ferrohydrodynamic mechanisms. We also show that ferrohydrodynamic interactions leads to asymmetric spreading; and the droplet spreads preferentially in a direction orthogonal to the magnetic field lines. We show analytically that during the retraction regime, the kinetic energy of the droplet is distributed unequally in the transverse and longitudinal directions due to the Lorentz force. This ultimately leads to suppression of droplet rebound. We study the role of Bo m at fixed We~60, and observed that the liquid lamella becomes unstable at the onset of retraction phase, through nucleation of holes, their proliferation and rupture after reaching a critical thickness only on SH surfaces, but is absent on hydrophilic surfaces. We propose an analytical model to predict the onset of instability at a critical Bo m . The analytical model shows that the critical Bo m is a function of the impact We, and the critical Bo m decreases with increasing We. We illustrate a phase map encompassing all the post-impact ferrohydrodynamic phenomena on SH surfaces for a wide range of We and Bo m .