Organizers: Paulo Arratia (U Penn), Anna Frishman (PCTS), Victor Steinberg (Weizmann), Howard Stone (PCTS, PU)

This workshop will focus on Elastic Turbulence, a chaotic, strongly fluctuating regime of a fluid flow, which, amazingly, occurs at low Reynolds number (Re). This phenomenon, observed in polymer solutions, is driven by the strong coupling between the fluid flow and its elasticity at large Weissenberg number (Wi), defined as the product of the polymer relaxation time and the fluid shear rate. The statistical features of the flow in this regime have been suggested to be universal, insensitive to the details of the viscoelastic fluid. As such, it may even be relevant as a source of chaos in flows of living organisms on microscopic scales, if the latter exhibit elastic stresses.

The aim of the workshop will be to bring together theoreticians and experimentalists to take stock of the field, and determine what are the outstanding problems and open questions. The workshop would also explore the connection between Elastic Turbulence and higher Re, high Wi number flows, such as “elasto-inertial turbulence” at moderate Re and the phenomenon of drag reduction at high Re.