No Arabic abstract
Recently, the nature of viscoelastic drag-reducing turbulence (DRT), especially maximum drag reduction (MDR) state, has become a focus of controversy. It has long been regarded as polymers-modulated inertial turbulence (IT), but is challenged by the newly proposed concept of elasto-inertial turbulence (EIT). This study is to re-picture DRT in parallel plane channels by introducing dynamics of EIT based on statistical and budget analysis for a series of flow regimes from the onset of DR to EIT. Energy conversion between velocity fluctuations and polymers as well as polymeric pressure redistribution effect are of particular concern, based on which a new energy self-sustaining process (SSP) of DRT is re-pictured. The numerical results indicate that at low Reynolds number (Re), the flow enters laminar regime before EIT-related SSP is formed with the increase of elasticity, whereas, at moderate Re, EIT-related SSP can get involved and survive from being relaminarized. This somehow explains the reason why relaminarization is observed for small Re while the flow directly enters MDR and EIT at moderate Re. Moreover, with the proposed energy picture, the newly discovered phenomenon that the streamwise velocity fluctuations lag behind those in wall-normal direction can be well explained. The re-pictured SSP certainly justify that IT nature is gradually replaced by that of EIT in DRT with the increase of elasticity.
We create a highly controlled lab environment-accessible to both global and local monitoring-to analyse turbulent boiling flows and in particular their shear stress in a statistically stationary state. Namely, by precisely monitoring the drag of strongly turbulent Taylor-Couette flow (the flow in between two co-axially rotating cylinders, Reynolds number $textrm{Re}approx 10^6$) during its transition from non-boiling to boiling, we show that the intuitive expectation, namely that a few volume percent of vapor bubbles would correspondingly change the global drag by a few percent, is wrong. Rather, we find that for these conditions a dramatic global drag reduction of up to 45% occurs. We connect this global result to our local observations, showing that for major drag reduction the vapor bubble deformability is crucial, corresponding to Weber numbers larger than one. We compare our findings with those for turbulent flows with gas bubbles, which obey very different physics than vapor bubbles. Nonetheless, we find remarkable similarities and explain these.
Viscoelastic fluids are a common subclass of rheologically complex materials that are encountered in diverse fields from biology to polymer processing. Often the flows of viscoelastic fluids are unstable in situations where ordinary Newtonian fluids are stable, owing to the nonlinear coupling of the elastic and viscous stresses. Perhaps more surprisingly, the instabilities produce flows with the hallmarks of turbulence -- even though the effective Reynolds numbers may be $O(1)$ or smaller. We provide perspectives on viscoelastic flow instabilities by integrating the input from speakers at a recent international workshop: historical remarks, characterization of fluids and flows, discussion of experimental and simulation tools, and modern questions and puzzles that motivate further studies of this fascinating subject. The materials here will be useful for researchers and educators alike, especially as the subject continues to evolve in both fundamental understanding and applications in engineering and the sciences.
Clustering of inertial particles is important for many types of astrophysical and geophysical turbulence, but it has been studied predominately for incompressible flows. Here we study compressible flows and compare clustering in both compressively (irrotationally) and vortically (solenoidally) forced turbulence. Vortically and compressively forced flows are driven stochastically either by solenoidal waves or by circular expansion waves, respectively. For compressively forced flows, the power spectra of the density of inertial particles are a particularly sensitive tool for displaying particle clustering relative to the density enhancement. We use both Lagrangian and Eulerian descriptions for the particles. Particle clustering through shock interaction is found to be particularly prominent in turbulence driven by spherical expansion waves. It manifests itself through a double-peaked distribution of spectral power as a function of Stokes number. The two peaks are associated with two distinct clustering mechanisms; shock interaction for smaller Stokes numbers and the centrifugal sling effect for larger values. The clustering of inertial particles is associated with the formation of caustics. Such caustics can only be captured in the Lagrangian description, which allows us to assess the relative importance of caustics in vortically and irrotationally forced turbulence. We show that the statistical noise resulting from the limited number of particles in the Lagrangian description can be removed from the particle power spectra, allowing us a more detailed comparison of the residual spectra. We focus on the Epstein drag law relevant for rarefied gases, but show that our findings apply also to the usual Stokes drag.
We show that viscoelastic plane Poiseuille flow becomes linearly unstable in the absence of inertia, in the limit of high elasticities, for ultra-dilute polymer solutions. While inertialess elastic instabilities have been predicted for curvilinear shear flows, this is the first ever report of a purely elastic linear instability in a rectilinear shear flow. The novel instability continues upto a Reynolds number ($Re$) of $O(1000)$, corresponding to the recently identified elasto-inertial turbulent state believed to underlie the maximum-drag-reduced regime. Thus, for highly elastic ultra-dilute polymer solutions, a single linearly unstable modal branch may underlie transition to elastic turbulence at zero $Re$, and to elasto-inertial turbulence at moderate $Re$, implying the existence of continuous pathways connecting the turbulent states to each other, and to the laminar base state.
Previous studies on nonspherical particle-fluid interaction were mostly confined to elongated fiber-like particles, which were observed to induce turbulence drag reduction. However, with the presence of tiny disk-like particles how wall turbulence is modulated and whether drag reduction occurs are still unknown. Motivated by those open questions, we performed two-way coupled direct numerical simulations of inertialess spheroids in turbulent channel flow by an Eulerian-Lagrangian approach. The additional stress accounts for the feedback from inertialess spheroids on the fluid phase. The results demonstrate that both rigid elongated fibers (prolate spheroids) and thin disks (oblate spheroids) can lead to significant turbulence modulations and drag reduction. However, the disk-induced drag reduction is less pronounced than that of rigid fibers with the same volume fraction. Typical features of drag-reduced flows by additives are observed in both flow statistics and turbulence coherent structures. Moreover, in contrast to one-way simulations, the two-way coupled results of spheroidal particles exhibit stronger preferential alignments and lower rotation rates. At the end we propose a drag reduction mechanism by inertialess spheroids and explain the different performance for drag reduction by fibers and disks. We find that the spheroidal particles weaken the quasistreamwise vortices through negative work and, therefore, the Reynolds shear stress is reduced. However, the mean shear stress generated by particles, which is shape-dependent, partly compensates for the reduction of Reynolds shear stress and thus affects the efficiency of drag reduction. The present study implies that tiny disk-like particles can be an alternative drag reduction agent in wall turbulence.