| Summary: | Plumes are formed when a continuous buoyant forcing is supplied at a localized source. Buoyancy can be created by either a heat flux, a compositional difference between the fluid coming from the source and its surroundings, or a combination of both. In this thesis, two types of laminar plumes with different forcing mechanisms were investigated: forced plumes and autocatalytic plumes. The forced plumes were compositionally buoyant and were injected with inertial forcing into a fluid filled tank. The autocatalytic plumes were produced without mechanical forcing by buoyancy that was entirely the consequence of a nonlinear chemical reaction -- the iodate-arsenous acid (IAA) reaction. This reaction propagates as a reacting front and produces buoyancy by its exothermicity, and by the compositional difference between the reactant and product. Both the forced and autocatalytic plumes were examined in starting and steady states. The starting, or transient, state of the plume occurs when it initially rises through a fluid and develops a plume head on top of a trailing conduit. The steady state emerges after the plume head has risen to the top of a fluid filled tank leaving only a persistent conduit. Plume behaviour was studied through experimentation, simulation, and by using simple theoretical analysis. We performed the first ever study of plumes as they crossed over the transition between buoyancy-driven to momentum-driven flow. Regardless of the driving mechanism, forced plumes were found to exhibit a single power law relationship that explains their ascent velocity. However, the morphology of the plume heads was found to depend on the dominating driving mechanism. Confined heads were produced by buoyancy-driven plumes, and dispersed heads by momentum-driven plumes. Autocatalytic plumes were found to have rich dynamics that are a consequence of the interplay between fluid flow and chemical reaction. These plumes produced accelerating heads that detached from the conduit, forming free vortex rings. A second-generation head would then develop at the point of detachment. The detachment process for plumes was sensitively dependent on small fluctuations in their initial formation. In some cases, head detachment could occur multiple times for a single experimental run, thereby producing several generations of autocatalytic vortex rings. Head detachment was reproduced and studied using autocatalytic plume simulations. Autocatalytic flame balls, a phenomenon closely related to autocatalytic plumes, were also simulated. Flame balls were found to have three dynamical regimes. Below a critical radius, the smallest flame balls experienced front death. Above this radius, they formed elongating, reacting tails. The largest flame balls formed filamentary tails unable to sustain a reaction.
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