Vortex Analysis and Fluid Transport in Time-Dependent Flows

In this contribution, we present a set of procedures developed to identify fluid flow structures and characterize their space-time evolution in time-dependent flows. In particular, we consider two different contests of importance in applied fluid mechanics: 1) large-scale almost 2D atmospheric and oceanic flows and 2) flow inside the left ventricle in the human blood circulation. For both cases, we designed an ad hoc experimental model to reproduce and deeply investigate the considered phenomena. We will focus on the post-processing of high-resolution velocity data sets obtained via laboratory experiments by measuring the flow field using a technique based on image analysis. We show how the proposed methodologies represent a valid tool suitable for extracting the main patterns and quantify fluid transport in complex flows from both Eulerian and Lagrangian perspectives.