Nicolas MORDANT

Wave turbulence can be observed when a large number of nonlinearly interacting waves are present, e.g. waves on the ocean. I was awarded a consolidator grant by ERC to develop experimental studies on this topic. We will focus on waves at the surface of water at various scales, elastic waves in a vibrating plate and stratified turbulence with internal waves.

Fluid turbulence is still a major issue in most natural or industrial flows. I developed several experiments to study the Lagrangian aspects of turbulence, i.e. the dispersion of individual particles. We are currently focusing on the case of inhomogeneous flows

Flows of electrically conducting fluids (liquid metals namely) can develop the dynamo instability that leads to the generation of a magnetic field as the Earth's. The VKS collaboration built a sodium experiment that led to the observation of a self generated magnetic field whose reversals resembles that of the Earth's.