Nature Communications (May 2018)

Flutter to tumble transition of buoyant spheres triggered by rotational inertia changes

  • Varghese Mathai,
  • Xiaojue Zhu,
  • Chao Sun,
  • Detlef Lohse

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04177-w
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 7

Abstract

Read online

Spiral and zigzag trajectories of rising bubbles and falling leaves represent some of the path instabilities commonly observed for objects moving through fluids. Here, Mathai et al. show that the moment-of-inertia plays a crucial role in triggering such path instabilities for rising spherical particles.