P-2 Extreme Fluids Team at
Los Alamos National Laboratory


Fluid Dynamics at Los Alamos



The P-23 Extreme Fluids Team atLos Alamos National Laboratoryapplies high-resolution diagnostics to study fluid dynamics problems in extreme environments, such as shock-driven mixing, multiphase flows, and variable-density turbulence. The team is composed of Los Alamos staff, postdocs, and students.

Research: Instabilities, Mixing, and Turbulence


We are performing high-resolution experiments to understand mixing transition and turbulence. There are many unanswered questions:

To see the answers that we have come up with so far, and to learn more about what we do, please visit ourPublications Page!


Below, is a short video about Turbulence Experiments at Los Alamos.


Experimental Facilities


The Vertical Shock Tube (VST)is designed to study shock-driven mixing of two fluids that are struck by a shock wave. We study the perturbations at the interface between the fluids, and how they grow due to the passage of the shock and mix the two fluids. Simultanous velocity and density field diagnostics (and soon to be implemented tomographic PIV) are used to study fluid properties and turbulence quantities.


The Turbulent Mixing Tunnel (TMT)studies the mixing of two fluids in a subsonic environment in order to quantify how momentum and buoyancy forces enhance or suppress mixing at various times in the flow. This facility also measures turbulence quantities for the development of better models for variable-density mixing.


The Horizontal Shock Tube (HST)is designed to study the response of particles and droplets in a gas to the passage of a shock wave, characterized by very strong accelerations. In these circumstances, the flow is unsteady, and our normal drag coefficients will not properly predict the motion of the particles. This facility is using an 8-pulse laser system with a high-speed camera to measure particle velocities and accelerations over very short time scales.



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Last Updated August 2019