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Laboratory model for plastic fragmentation in the turbulent ocean
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Researchers used laboratory experiments and numerical simulations to study how deformable and brittle fibers fragment in turbulent flow, finding that fragmentation is limited at small scales by a physical cut-off length determined by fluid-structure interactions, with implications for understanding microplastic generation in the ocean.
We study the fragmentation of deformable and brittle fibers in the inertial range of turbulence using laboratory experiments and numerical simulations. The fragmentation process is shown to be limited at small scales by a physical cut-off length due to fluid-structure interactions of the object with turbulence, and thus independent of the fiber brittleness. This scenario, comprehensively modeled by an evolution equation, leads to the accumulation of fragments slightly longer than the cut-off scale, as smaller fragments are too short to be deformed and broken by the turbulence. This result may improve our understanding of microplastic formation in the ocean.
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