No Arabic abstract
We investigate the effects of a nearby free surface on the stability of a flexible plate in axial flow. Confinement by rigid boundaries is known to affect flag flutter thresholds and fluttering dynamics significantly, and this work considers the effects of a more general confinement involving a deformable free surface. To this end, a local linear stability is proposed for a flag in axial uniform flow and parallel to a free surface, using one-dimensional beam and potential flow models to revisit this classical fluid-structure interaction problem. The physical behaviour of the confining free surface is characterized by the Froude number, corresponding to the ratio of the incoming flow velocity to that of the gravity waves. After presenting the simplified limit of infinite span (i.e. two-dimensional problem), the results are generalized to include finite-span and lateral confinement effects. In both cases, three unstable regimes are identified for varying Froude number. Rigidly-confined flutter is observed for low Froude number, i.e. when the free surface behaves as a rigid wall, and is equivalent to the classical problem of the confined flag. When the flow and wave velocities are comparable, a new instability is observed before the onset of flutter (i.e. at lower reduced flow speed) and results from the resonance of a structural bending wave and one of the fundamental modes of surface gravity waves. Finally, for large Froude number (low effect of gravity), flutter is observed with significant but passive deformation of the free surface in response of the flags displacement.
We consider waves radiated by a disturbance of oscillating strength moving at constant velocity along the free surface of a shear flow which, when undisturbed, has uniform horizontal vorticity of magnitude $S$. When no current is present the problem is a classical one and much studied, and in deep water a resonance is known to occur when $tau=|boldsymbol{V}|omega_0/g$ equals the critical value $1/4$ ($boldsymbol{V}$: velocity of disturbance, $omega_0$: oscillation frequency, $g$: gravitational acceleration). We show that the presence of the sub-surface shear current can change this picture radically. Not only does the resonant value of $tau$ depend strongly on the angle between $boldsymbol{V}$ and the currents direction and the shear-Froude number $mathrm{Frs}=|boldsymbol{V}|S/g$; when $mathrm{Frs}>1/3$, multiple resonant values --- as many as $4$ --- can occur for some directions of motion. At sufficiently large values of $mathrm{Frs}$, the smallest resonance frequency tends to zero, representing the phenomenon of critical velocity for ship waves. We provide a detailed analysis of the dispersion relation for the moving, oscillating disturbance, in both finite and infinite water depth, including for the latter case an overview of the different far-field waves which exist in different sectors of wave vector space under different conditions. Owing to the large number of parameters, a detailed discussion of the structure of resonances is provided for infinite depth only, where analytical results are available.
The classic evolution equations for potential flow on the free surface of a fluid flow are not closed because the pressure and the vertical velocity dynamics are not specified on the free surface. Moreover, their wave dynamics does not cause circulation of the fluid velocity on the free surface. The equations for free-surface motion we derive here are closed and they are not restricted to potential flow. Hence, true wave-current interaction dynamics can occur. In particular, the Kelvin-Noether theorem demonstrates that wave activity can induce fluid circulation and vorticity dynamics on the free surface. The wave-current interaction equations introduced here open new vistas for both the deterministic and stochastic analysis of nonlinear waves on free surfaces.
The behaviour of microscopic swimmers has previously been explored near large scale confining geometries and in the presence of very small-scale surface roughness. Here we consider an intermediate case of how a simple microswimmer, the tangential spherical squirmer, behaves adjacent to singly- and doubly-periodic sinusoidal surface topographies that spatially oscillate with an amplitude that is an order of magnitude less than the swimmer size and wavelengths within an order of magnitude of this scale. The nearest neighbour regularised Stokeslet method is used for numerical explorations after validating its accuracy for a spherical tangential squirmer that swims stably near a flat surface. The same squirmer is then introduced to the different surface topographies. The key governing factor in the resulting swimming behaviour is the size of the squirmer relative to the surface topography wavelength. When the squirmer is much larger, or much smaller, than the surface topography wavelength then directional guidance is not observed. Once the squirmer size is on the scale of the topography wavelength limited guidance is possible, often with local capture in the topography troughs. However, complex dynamics can also emerge, especially when the initial configuration is not close to alignment along topography troughs or above topography crests. In contrast to sensitivity in alignment and the topography wavelength, reductions in the amplitude of the surface topography or variations in the shape of the periodic surface topography do not have extensive impacts on the squirmer behaviour. Our findings more generally highlight that detailed numerical explorations are necessary to determine how surface topographies may interact with a given swimmer that swims stably near a flat surface and whether surface topographies may be designed to provide such swimmers with directional guidance.
The impact of a collapsing gas bubble above rigid, notched walls is considered. Such surface crevices and imperfections often function as bubble nucleation sites, and thus have a direct relation to cavitation-induced erosion and damage structures. A generic configuration is investigated numerically using a second-order-accurate compressible multi-component flow solver in a two-dimensional axisymmetric coordinate system. Results show that the crevice geometry has a significant effect on the collapse dynamics, jet formation, subsequent wave dynamics, and interactions. The wall-pressure distribution associated with erosion potential is a direct consequence of development and intensity of these flow phenomena.
We report on progress on the free surface flow in the presence of submerged oscillating line sources (2D) or point sources (3D) when a simple shear flow is present varying linearly with depth. Such sources are in routine use as Green functions in the realm of potential theory for calculating wave-body interactions, but no such theory exists in for rotational flow. We solve the linearized problem in 2D and 3D from first principles, based on the Euler equations, when the sources are at rest relative to the undisturbed surface. Both in 2D and 3D a new type of solution appears compared to irrotational case, a critical layer-like flow whose surface manifestation (wave) drifts downstream from the source at the velocity of the flow at the source depth. We analyse the additional vorticity in light of the vorticity equation and provide a simple physical argument why a critical layer is a necessary consequence of Kelvins circulation theorem. In 3D a related critical layer phenomenon occurs at every depth, whereby a street of counter-rotating vortices in the horizontal plane drift downstream at the local flow velocity.