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Oil-Water Mixing
As the fuel tanks in Naval ships are depleted during a voyage, the fuel has to be replaced with water, lest the ship become unstable. When the ship refuels, the added water is dumped out, and inevitably some fuel goes with it, causing environmental concern. With funding from the US Navy, Professor Joe Katz is studying the mixing of water and fuel, and the subsequent transport of oil 
droplets within turbulent flows. In a special laboratory devoted to this problem, Prof. Katz and his team use flow visualization techniques to identify specific phenomena that lead to mixing of oil and water in a tank; for example, a fuel jet impinging on an interface, or development of a shear layer. They quantify the amount of mixing that takes place and study the statistics of how the droplets migrate. Because the geometry of the tanks can be quite complex, there is a pressing need for improved computational tools to better design the tanks and minimize the mixing of oil and water. The data generated by Prof. Katz in the fuel mixing lab is being used for calibrating models that will predict the fuel content in the water for a given tank geometry.