Ultra-sharp pinnacles sculpted by natural convective dissolution

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: Ultra-sharp pinnacles sculpted by natural convective dissolution
المؤلفون: Michael Shelley, Leif Ristroph, Joshua Tong, Jinzi Mac Huang
المصدر: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
بيانات النشر: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020.
سنة النشر: 2020
مصطلحات موضوعية: Convection, geography, Multidisciplinary, geography.geographical_feature_category, Natural convection, Geometry, Karst, Curvature, 01 natural sciences, 010305 fluids & plasmas, External flow, Singularity, Physical Sciences, 0103 physical sciences, Fluid–structure interaction, 010306 general physics, Dissolution, Geology
الوصف: The evolution of landscapes, landforms, and other natural structures involves highly interactive physical and chemical processes that often lead to intriguing shapes and recurring motifs. Particularly intricate and fine-scale features characterize the so-called karst morphologies formed by mineral dissolution into water. An archetypal form is the tall, slender, and sharply tipped karst pinnacle or rock spire that appears in multitudes in striking landforms called stone forests, but whose formative mechanisms remain unclear due to complex, fluctuating, and incompletely understood developmental conditions. Here, we demonstrate that exceedingly sharp spires also form under the far-simpler conditions of a solid dissolving into a surrounding liquid. Laboratory experiments on solidified sugars in water show that needlelike pinnacles, as well as bed-of-nails-like arrays of pinnacles, emerge robustly from the dissolution of solids with smooth initial shapes. Although the liquid is initially quiescent and no external flow is imposed, persistent flows are generated along the solid boundary as dense, solute-laden fluid descends under gravity. We use these observations to motivate a mathematical model that links such boundary-layer flows to the shape evolution of the solid. Dissolution induces these natural convective flows that, in turn, enhance dissolution rates, and simulations show that this feedback drives the shape toward a finite-time singularity or blow-up of apex curvature that is cut off once the pinnacle tip reaches microscales. This autogenic mechanism produces ultra-fine structures as an attracting state or natural consequence of the coupled processes at work in the closed solid-fluid system.
تدمد: 1091-6490
0027-8424
URL الوصول: https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_dedup___::c8fd7606efe047b42ef3911eb8dd570f
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2001524117
حقوق: OPEN
رقم الأكسشن: edsair.doi.dedup.....c8fd7606efe047b42ef3911eb8dd570f
قاعدة البيانات: OpenAIRE