Eric Brown

Professor Brown does experimental research on the physics of fluids and soft condensed matter. His interestis in understanding the mechanics of complex systems in the natural world such as turbulent flows, complex fluids, and granular materials. These systems can be challenging to understand because there are many particles which may have non-linear interactions or are out of equilibrium.

Problems he is currently working on include:

• Modeling the dynamics of large-scale structures in turbulent flows, i.e. wind, with applications togeophysical flows.
• The mechanism for shear thickening in concentrated suspensions such as cornstarch and water.
• The role of entanglement in strain-stiffening of polymer materials using model systems of random packings of macroscopic chains.