Events Calendar

2016 John Laufer Lecture

Speaker: Mory Gharib, Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Bioinspired Engineering, Division of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA

Talk Title: On the Generation of Toroidal Micro-Plasmas in the Flow Field of Impinging Water-Jets

Abstract: There is a renewed interest in atmospheric pressure plasma (APP), also known as atmospheric pressure corona, for its broad scientific and industrial applications. As a weakly ionized non-equilibrium plasma, APP has no defined shape or volume and, in general, is unstable and non-uniform. Therefore, it is desirable to have a source of stable and uniform APP with defined morphologies for scientific investigations that could take advantage of the highly collisional state of the plasma medium. Here, we report an approach to produce atmospheric pressure micro-plasmas in which the plasma cloud presents a stable, and topologically-connected and self-confined toroidal shape. We show that this unique toroidal APP morphology can be uniquely generated when a high-speed laminar micro-jet of de-ionized water impinges on a di-electric solid surface. This toroidal micro-plasma shows a unique and previously unreported plasma resonance mode characterized by a strong and discrete radio frequency emission.

Biography: Professor Mory Gharib is the Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Bioinspired Engineering, and is also Vice Provost for Research at Caltech, where in 2014 he was made Director of the Linde Institute for Economics and Management Sciences. He has been a professor at the Graduate Aeronautical Labs at Caltech since 1993, and before that was Professor of Fluid Mechanics in the Department of Applied Mechanics and Engineering Sciences at the University of California, San Diego.

Professor Gharib is a member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the National Academy of Engineering. He is a Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a Fellow of: the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Physical Society (APS), the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the Institute of Physics (IP). He has more than 200 publications in refereed journals and 83 US patents.

More Information: photo3.jpg

Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - Ballroom A

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Valerie Childress