Armour College of Engineering’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering will host a lecture by Ranga Narayanan, the Bonnie and Fed Edie Chair and Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Florida, entitled “Instability at the Interface – Patterns by Competition” from 3:15-4:30 pm on Wednesday, April 9, 2014 in the Perlstein Hall Auditorium.

In this general talk, the focus will be on the interfacial instability that may arise when two contiguous phases are in contact with each other. An interface my become unstable by changing its shape or by generating flow as a control variable exceeds its critical value. For example when a heavy liquid overlies a lighter one the interface can undulate and break as the width of the container exceeds a critical value. This is the familiar Rayleigh-Taylor instability where patterns can be generated. Similarly, when a bilayer is parametrically excited, a pattern will be generated at a critical excitation. These patterns require competition of effects one of which is connected to interfacial tension.