The intermaterial area density generated by time- and spatially periodic 2D chaotic flows

This paper explores in some detail the spatial structure and the statistical properties of partially mixed structures evolving under the effects of a time-periodic chaotic flow. Numerical simulations are used to examine the evolution of the interface between two fluids, which grows exponentially with a rate equal to the topological entropy of the flow. Such growth is much faster than predicted by the Lyapunov exponent of the flow. As time increases, the partially mixed system develops into a self-similar structure. Frequency distributions of interface density corresponding to different times collapse onto an invariant curve by a simple homogeneous scaling. This scaling behavior is a direct consequence of the generic asymptotic directionality property characteristic of 2D time-periodic flows. Striation thickness distributions (STDs) also acquire a time-invariant shape after a few (similar to 5-10) periods of the flow and are collapsed onto a single curve by standardization. It is also shown that STDs can be accurately predicted from distributions of stretching values, thus providing an effective method for calculation of STDs in complex flows. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.