LP13351 - In this work, new advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are used to give fresh insight into the complex behavior of multiphase flows, such as the reason bubbles wobble from side to side as they rise. Physicists have long sought to understand the complex dynamics of these systems, which are of fundamental importance throughout physics and engineering, in establishing predictive models for systems as diverse as bubbles of gas rising in a glass of beer, to oil droplets rising from the sea floor. While conventional MRI is too slow to image these rapidly changing systems, MRI acquisitions are here accelerated using the science behind image compression to allow the measurement of effectively instantaneous velocity fields around rising single bubbles and swarms of bubbles. These measurements, which have not been previously possible, reveal that vortices generated in the horizontal plane behind rising bubbles are coupled with oscillations of the bubble rise path, and instigate the generation of turbulence in multi-bubble systems.
