Wind tunnel experiments have shown that bumps on the leading edge of model humpback whale flippers cause them to "stall" (i.e., lose lift dramatically) more gradually and at a higher angle of attack. Here we develop an aerodynamic model which explains the observed increase in stall angle. The model predicts that as the amplitude of the bumps is increased, the lift curve flattens out, leading to potentially desirable control properties. We find that stall delay is insensitive to the wavelength of the bumps, in accordance with experimental observations.

Abstract. -The role of surface rheology in fundamental fluid dynamical systems, such as liquid coating flows and soap film formation, is poorly understood. We investigate the role of surface viscosity in the classical film-coating problem. We propose a theoretical model that predicts film thickening based on a purely surface-viscous theory. The theory is supported by a set of new experimental data that demonstrates light thickening even at very high surfactant concentrations for which Marangoni effects are irrelevant. The model and experiments represent a new regime that has not been identified before.

The motion of small air bubbles in a horizontal solid-body rotating flow is investigated experimentally. Bubbles with a typical radius of 1 mm are released in a liquid-filled horizontally rotating cylinder. We measure the transient motion of the bubbles in solid-body rotation and their final equilibrium position from which we compute drag and lift coefficients for a wide range of dimensionless shear rates 0.1

We show that near-spherical micrometer-sized colloidal particles at an interface of two fluids experience inter-particle forces merely as a consequence of their shape-induced capillary interaction. The interaction is strong even if the deviations from sphericity are on the nm-scale, and can hardly be avoided in experiment. For particles of 2 µm radius, a deformation of 20 nm can result in an attractive potential of 2kBT at a distance of 4 particle radii. Dynamical simulations of many particles confirm that the forces lead to aggregates of dendritic or hexagonal-lattice type. The latter pattern exhibits strong herringbone-phase orientational order.