Structure of the stretching field in chaotic cavity flows

Stretching of material elements in time‐periodic cavity flows is investigated numerically. The spatial structure of the stretching field is determined not only by nonchaotic islands and by unstable manifolds of hyperbolic periodic points, but also by singularities of the flow field at the cavity corners. For the short time scales interesting to most mixing applications, regions of very high stretching (good local mixing) are determined by unstable manifolds that pass close to the corners of the cavity. Low stretching (poor local mixing) regions are usually found both inside and near islands. In some cases, however, the unstable manifolds wrap themselves around the islands, preventing the formation of segregated low stretching subregions within the chaotic region.