The London Fluids Colloquium aims to bring together researchers in Fluid Dynamics in London. The Colloquium will take place once a term at a London Institution on a Friday at 2-5pm. Each colloquium will feature short early career researcher talks and one seminar length talk from an invited researcher. There will be refreshments following the talks and an opportunity to discuss and meet other fluids researchers. The series is open to researchers from across London and is free to attend.

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Upcoming colloquium

The next colloquium will be held at UCL, Friday 27th March 2026 2-5pm. For catering purposes, if you plan on attending please enter your name in this form: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/JAi6Zs95Wq.

2:05-2:30pm Hang Su (Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London), Emergent coordination and propulsion by cilia
Abstract: Cilia are microscopic filaments that cells use to generate fluid motion and propulsion, yet the mechanisms behind their coordinated beating remain unclear. [show more]To explore coordination in numerical simulations, we develop a filament oscillator model that introduces a small number of degrees of freedom to experimentally measured cilia beat patterns. We then construct a model ciliate by distributing these model cilia on the surface of a rigid sphere and allowing their degrees of freedom to evolve under their hydrodynamic interactions. By varying an elasticity parameter in the model, the ciliate exhibits emergent coordinated states, including both symplectic and diaplectic waves. The model is subsequently used to investigate the hydrodynamic function of these states and provides a foundation for extending the approach to more realistic cilia configurations.
2:30-2:55pm Xin Guan (Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London), Curvature Singularity in Electrified Vortex Sheets
Abstract: Vortex sheet model is widely used to simulate water/interfacial waves. A famous result of Moore shows that it suffers from finite-time curvature singularity because of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. [show more]By incorporating surface tension, finite-thickness effect, or vortex blob, the curvature singularity can be successfully suppressed. In this talk, we investigate the dynamics of electrified vortex sheets, i.e. vortex sheets coupling an electric field whose direction is parallel to the undisturbed interface. In electrohydrodynamics, it is well known that horizontal electric fields can stabilise flows, thereby motivating the current study. Our study combines fully nonlinear numerical simulations using boundary integral method and weakly nonlinear models derived using Dirichlet-Neumann operator expansion. Although linear theory shows that there is no Kelvin-Helmholtz instability when the electric field strength Eb exceeds a critical value, we find that curvature singularity persists for any value of Eb. More interestingly, the singularity time follows two distinct scaling laws, depending on Eb. For small values of Eb, we recover the classical logarithm-scaling law found by Moore; for large values of Eb, an algebraic-scaling law is found.
3:00-3:50pm Dominic Vella (Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford) [website], Drops and bubbles with mobile boundaries: From bendotaxis to the unpoppable bubble
Abstract: The basic physics of a small droplet on a rigid substrate are well known: drops should remain at rest and adopt the form of a spherical cap with contact angle determined by the balance of surface tensions at the contact line. [show more]However, when the interface is complex or the boundary is no longer rigid, this picture may change. I will begin by showing how a simple drop can deviate from the spherical cap form if the interface becomes contaminated as it evaporates. This is caused by elastic effects within the interface itself. I will also show that droplets confined by flexible boundaries may spontaneously move. Returning to pure drops of simple fluids, I’ll end by discussing attempts to blow bubbles inside a sessile drop and a surprising means to help the resulting bubbles live apparently indefinitely.
4:00-5:00pm Discussions over refreshments (Room 502)

Location

The colloquium will take place in Harrie Massey Lecture Theatre, 25 Gordon Street.

25 Gordon Street (UCL Mathematics / Students Union) is a short walk from various stations: Euston Square (3 min), Euston (5 min), Warren Street (7 min), Russell Square (13 min).

Harrie Massey Lecture Theatre is on the ground floor. From the main entrance, walk past the shop and lifts to the back of the building and turn left.

Past colloquia

Friday 12th December 2025 at Imperial College London:

2:05-2:30pm Cyan White (Department of Mathematics, UCL), Exact solutions for vortex equilibria by conformal mapping
2:30-2:55pm Freya Bull (Department of Mathematics, UCL), Multi-scale modelling of blood rheology in sickle cell disease
3:00-3:50pm Björn Hof (Institute of Science and Technology Austria), The turbulence problem — the wrong control parameter and one of the Martians
4:00-5:00pm Discussions over refreshments

Friday 23rd May 2025 at UCL:

2:05-2:30pm Beth Clarke (Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London), Using structural anisotropy to stabilise asymmetric beating in instability driven filaments
2:30-2:55pm Anna Curran (Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London), A theoretical study of the regularisation of stagnant caps of surfactant
3:00-3:50pm Matthew Juniper (Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge), Information flows: probability, inference, and information in fluid mechanics
4:00-5:00pm Discussions over refreshments

Organisers

Edwina Yeo (Department of Mathematics, University College London)

Catherine Kamal (Department of Mathematics, University College London)

Gunnar Peng (Department of Mathematics, University College London)

Ory Schnitzer (Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London)

Eric Keaveny (Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London)

Sponsors

We gratefully acknowledge support from the EPSRC National Fellowships in Fluid Dynamics scheme (Grant number EP/X027902/1) and the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London.