Stochastic Methods in Fluid Mechanics

Book excerpt: Since their first introduction in natural sciences through the work of Einstein on Brownian motion in 1905 and further works, in particular by Langevin, Smoluchowski and others, stochastic processes have been used in several areas of science and technology. For example, they have been applied in chemical studies, or in fluid turbulence and for combustion and reactive flows. The articles in this book provide a general and unified framework in which stochastic processes are presented as modeling tools for various issues in engineering, physics and chemistry, with particular focus on fluid mechanics and notably dispersed two-phase flows. The aim is to develop what can referred to as stochastic modeling for a whole range of applications.