Chaotic advection of fluid flow and fractal structures

Miguel A.F. Sanjuan

Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos Group Universidad Rey Juan Carlos,
Tulipán s/n, 28933 Mostoles, Madrid, Spain

Abstract: Chaotic advection of a time-dependent fluid flow tries to model the velocity field of the fluid in terms of the stream function, in such a way that it offers the possibility to describe the motion of the trajectories of a fluid particle in a incompresible fluid flow using a Hamiltonian formulation. From this perspective, we use methods of Nonlinear Dynamics to analyze the invariant sets in the dynamics of the fluid and the fractal structures that appear, typically invariants sets (nonattracting chaotic sets) associated to transient chaotic motions.