No Arabic abstract
Faraday waves are generated at the air/liquid interface inside an array of square cells. As the free surface inside each cell is destabilizing due to the oscillations, the shape of the free surface is drastically changing. Depending on the value of the frequency f of oscillations, different patterns are observed inside each cell. For well defined f values, neighboring cells are observed to interact and a general organization is noticed. In such a situation, initially disordered structures lead to a general pattern covering the entire liquid pool and a spatial order appears all over the cell array. This abstract is related to a fluid dynamics video for the gallery of fluid motion 2009.
Neural networks (NN) are implemented as sub-grid flame models in a large-eddy simulation of a single-injector liquid-propellant rocket engine. The NN training process presents an extraordinary challenge. The multi-dimensional combustion instability problem involves multi-scale lengths and characteristic times in an unsteady flow problem with nonlinear acoustics, addressing both transient and dynamic-equilibrium behaviors, superimposed on a turbulent reacting flow with very narrow, moving flame regions. Accurate interpolation between the points of the training data becomes vital. The NNs proposed here are trained based on data processed from a few CFD simulations of a single-injector liquid-propellant rocket engine with different dynamical configurations to reproduce the information stored in a flamelet table. The training set is also enriched by data from the physical characteristics and considerations of the combustion model. Flame temperature is used as an extra input for other flame variables to improve the NN-based model accuracy and physical consistency. The trained NNs are first tested offline on the flamelet table. These physics-aware NN-based closure models are successfully implemented into CFD simulations and verified by being tested on various dynamical configurations. The results from those tests compare favorably with counterpart table-based CFD simulations.
We analyze the instability of a vortex column in a dilute polymer solution at large $textit{Re}$ and $textit{De}$ with $textit{El} = textit{De}/textit{Re}$, the elasticity number, being finite. Here, $textit{Re} = Omega_0 a^2/ u_s$ and $textit{De} = Omega_0 tau$ are, respectively, the Reynolds and Deborah numbers based on the core angular velocity ($Omega_0$), the radius of the column ($a$), the solvent-based kinematic viscosity ($ u_s = mu_s/rho$), and the polymeric relaxation time ($tau$). The stability of small-amplitude perturbations in this distinguished limit is governed by the elastic Rayleigh equation whose spectrum is parameterized by $ textrm{E} = textit{El}(1-beta)$, $beta$ being the ratio of the solvent to the solution viscosity. The neglect of the relaxation terms, in the said limit, implies that the polymer solution supports undamped elastic shear waves propagating relative to the base-state flow. The existence of these shear waves leads to multiple (three) continuous spectra associated with the elastic Rayleigh equation in contrast to just one for the original Rayleigh equation. Further, unlike the neutrally stable inviscid case, an instability of the vortex column arises for finite E due to a pair of elastic shear waves being driven into a resonant interaction under the differential convection by the irrotational shearing flow outside the core. An asymptotic analysis for the Rankine profile shows the absence of an elastic threshold; although, for small E, the growth rate of the unstable discrete mode is transcendentally small, being O$(textrm{E}^2e^{-1/textrm{E}^{frac{1}{2}}})$. An accompanying numerical investigation shows that the instability persists for smooth vorticity profiles, provided the radial extent of the transition region (from the rotational core to the irrotational exterior) is less than a certain $textrm{E}$-dependent threshold.
Extremely small amounts of surface-active contaminants are known to drastically modify the hydrodynamic response of the water-air interface. Surfactant concentrations as low as a few thousand molecules per square micron are sufficient to eventually induce complete stiffening. In order to probe the shear response of a water-air interface, we design a radial flow experiment that consists in an upward water jet directed to the interface. We observe that the standard no-slip effect is often circumvented by an azimuthal instability with the occurence of a vortex pair. Supported by numerical simulations, we highlight that the instability occurs in the (inertia-less) Stokes regime and is driven by surfactant advection by the flow. The latter mechanism is suggested as a general feature in a wide variety of reported and yet unexplained observations.
The macroscopic dynamics of a droplet impacting a solid is crucially determined by the intricate air dynamics occurring at the vanishingly small length scale between droplet and substrate prior to direct contact. Here we investigate the inverse problem, namely the role of air for the impact of a horizontal flat disk onto a liquid surface, and find an equally significant effect. Using an in-house experimental technique, we measure the free surface deflections just before impact, with a precision of a few micrometers. Whereas stagnation pressure pushes down the surface in the center, we observe a lift-up under the edge of the disk, which sets in at a later stage, and which we show to be consistent with a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability of the water-air interface.
A comprehensive study of the effect of wall heating or cooling on the linear, transient and secondary growth of instability in channel flow is conducted. The effect of viscosity stratification, heat diffusivity and of buoyancy are estimated separately, with some unexpected results. From linear stability results, it has been accepted that heat diffusivity does not affect stability. However, we show that realistic Prandtl numbers cause a transient growth of disturbances that is an order of magnitude higher than at zero Prandtl number. Buoyancy, even at fairly low levels, gives rise to high levels of subcritical energy growth. Unusually for transient growth, both of these are spanwise-independent and not in the form of streamwise vortices. At moderate Grashof numbers, exponential growth dominates, with distinct Rayleigh-Benard and Poiseuille modes for Grashof numbers upto $sim 25000$, which merge thereafter. Wall heating has a converse effect on the secondary instability compared to the primary, destabilising significantly when viscosity decreases towards the wall. It is hoped that the work will motivate experimental and numerical efforts to understand the role of wall heating in the control of channel and pipe flows.