Fascinating world of near wall low Reynolds number flows

Hydrodynamic interactions at low Reynolds numbers are fascinating in many aspects. A rotating cylinder near a flat wall shows interesting behavior in experiments as it slides in the reverse direction to its rolling, whereas the theory shows that there is no coupling between rolling and translation. In this project, we will use external magnetic fields to rotate a small cylindrical permanent magnet on a glass slide and demonstrate  the conditions that onsets the rolling and sliding modes of rotating cylinders. In addition to exploration of hydrodynamic aspects of the problem, we will use machine learning/computer vision tools to capture the motion of the cylinder, and similar other objects such as magnetic ribbons from the recorded videos.