Mixing is an aggregation process

With the aid of several demonstration experiments, it is shown how a stirred scalar mixture relaxes towards uniformity through an aggregation process. The elementary bricks are stretched sheets whose rates of diffusive smoothing and coalescence build up the overall mixture concentration distribution. The cases studied, in particular, include mixtures in two and three dimensions, with different stirring protocols, which all lead to a family of concentration distributions stable by self-convolution. To cite this article: E. Villermaux, J. Duplat, C. R. Mecanique 331 (2003).