Flow at Ultra-High Reynolds and Rayleigh Numbers : A Status Report

Because of their extremely low viscosity, liquid helium and ultra-cold helium gas provide ideal media modeling flows that occur in a variety of extreme conditions, such as satellite reentry, where they are difficult to study. The refrigerators installed at several physics laboratories that supply liquid helium for particle accelerators (such as the one intended for the SSC in Texas or the one at Brookhaven National Laboratory) is so great that they can also supply cold helium for such fluid dynamics studies. This book surveys the challenges and prospects for such research. It will be of interest to physicist interested in fluid dynamics