ALBERT

Beschreibung: Motivated by the non-Newtonian properties of mucus and the bilayer nature of fluid lining in the pulmonary airways, we investigate surfactant transport on both single and bilayer fluid systems; the aim is twofold. First, we explore the influence of two principle rheological properties of mucus, yield stress and shear thinning, on the surfactant spreading behaviour. Secondly, in these airways, mucus, which has substantial non-Newtonian properties, overlies the periciliary liquid layer (PCL) which is primarily Newtonian, and we incorporate this bilayer structure into the analysis. This consists of the derivation of coupled spatio-temporal evolution equations describing the layer thicknesses and surfactant concentration. Subsequent analytical methods examine limiting cases where similarity variables can be usefully employed, and more generally numerical simulations are performed.

Beschreibung: The motion of fluid droplets in capillary tubes subject to the action of a mean pressure gradient and an oscillatory body force is studied via numerical computations. The effects of the oscillatory forcing on the bulk flow rate and on the droplet velocity are evaluated, and results are presented for a range of forcing conditions, fluid properties and drop sizes. For large droplets (whose undeformed diameter exceeds that of the capillary tube), significant enhancement in the bulk flow rate is observed when the drop capillary number is small and the oscillatory forcing is strong. The enhancement is associated with increased droplet deformation in the presence of oscillatory forcing. The dependence of the flow enhancement on the amplitude, frequency and waveform of the oscillatory body force is evaluated for a range of fluid properties.

Beschreibung: A new theory for the turbulent plane wall jet without external stream is proposed based on a similarity analysis of the governing equations. The asymptotic invariance principle (AIP) is used to require that properly scaled profiles reduce to similarity solutions of the inner and outer equations separately in the limit of infinite Reynolds number. Application to the inner equations shows that the appropriate velocity scale is the friction velocity, u*, and the length scale is v/u*. For finite Reynolds numbers, the profiles retain a dependence on the length-scale ratio, y1/2+ = u*y1/2/v, where y1/2 is the distance from the wall at which the mean velocity has dropped to 1/2 its maximum value. In the limit as y1/2+ → ∞, the familiar law of the wall is obtained. Application of the AIP to the outer equations shows the appropriate velocity scale to be Um, the velocity maximum, and the length scale y1/2; but again the profiles retain a dependence on y1/2+ for finite values of it. The Reynolds shear stress in the outer layer scales with u*2, while the normal stresses scale with Um2. Also Um ∼ y1/2n where n 〈 -1/2 and must be determined from the data. The theory cannot rule out the possibility that the outer flow may retain a dependence on the source conditions, even asymptotically. The fact that both these profiles describe the entire wall jet for finite values of y1/2+, but reduce to inner and outer profiles in the limit, is used to determine their functional forms in the 'overlap' region which both retain. The result from near asymptotics is that the velocity profiles in the overlap region must be power laws, but with parameters which depend on Reynolds number y1/2+ and are only asymptotically constant. The theoretical friction law is also a power law depending on the velocity parameters. As a consequence, the asymptotic plane wall jet cannot grow linearly, although the difference from linear growth is small. It is hypothesized that the inner part of the wall jet and the inner part of the zero-pressure-gradient boundary layer are the same. It follows immediately that all of the wall jet and boundary layer parameters should be the same, except for two in the outer flow which can differ only by a constant scale factor. The theory is shown to be in excellent agreement with the experimental data which show that source conditions may determine uniquely the asymptotic state achieved. Surprisingly, only a single parameter, B1 = (Umv/Mo)/(y1/2Mo/v2)n = constant where n ≈ -0.528, appears to be required to determine the entire flow for a given source.

Beschreibung: Theoretical and computational aspects of the self-induced motion of closed and periodic three-dimensional vortex sheets situated at the interfaces between two inviscid fluids with generally different densities in the presence of surface tension are considered. In the mathematical formulation, the vortex sheet is described by a continuous distribution of marker points that move with the velocity of the fluid normal to the vortex sheet while executing an arbitrary tangential motion. Evolution equations for the vectorial jump in the velocity across the vortex sheet, the vectorial strength of the vortex sheet, and the scalar circulation field or strength of the effective dipole field following the marker points are derived. The computation of the self-induced motion of the vortex sheet requires the accurate evaluation of the strongly singular Biot-Savart integral whose existence requires that the normal vector varies in a continuous fashion over the vortex sheet. Two methods of computing the principal value of the Biot-Savart integral are implemented. The first method involves computing the vector potential and the principal value of the harmonic potential over the vortex sheet, and then differentiating them in tangential directions to produce the normal or tangential component of the velocity, in the spirit of generalized vortex methods developed by Baker (1983). The second method involves subtracting off the dominant singularity of the Biot-Savart kernel and then accounting for its contribution by use of vector identities. Evaluating the strongly singular Biot-Savart integral is thus reduced to computing a weakly singular integral involving the mean curvature of the vortex sheet, and this allows the routine discretization of the vortex sheet into curved elements whose normal vector is not necessarily continuous across the edges, and the computation of the self-induced velocity without kernel desingularization. Numerical simulations of the motion of a closed or periodic vortex sheet immersed in a homogeneous fluid confirm the effectiveness of the numerical methods for a limited time of evolution. Numerical instabilities arise after a certain evolution time due to the ill-posedness of vortex sheet dynamics. The motion may be regularized by desingularizing the Biot-Savart kernel using either Krasny's (1986b) method or spectrum truncation. Depending, however, on the physical mechanism that drives the motion, the instabilities may persevere.

Beschreibung: The collision of a strong vortex with a surface is an important problem because significant impulsive loads may be generated. Prediction of helicopter fatigue lifetime may be limited by an inability to predict these loads accurately. Experimental results for the impingement of a helicopter rotor-tip vortex on a cylindrical airframe show a suction peak on the top of the airframe that strengthens and then weakens within milliseconds. A simple line-vortex model can predict the experimental results if the vortex is at least two vortex-core radii away from the airframe. After this, the model predicts continually deepening rather than lessening suction as the vortex stretches. Experimental results suggest that axial flow within the core of a tip vortex has an impact on the airframe pressure distribution upon close approach. The mechanism for this is hypothesized to be the inviscid redistribution of the vorticity field within the vortex as the axial velocity stagnates. Two models of a tip vortex with axial flow are considered. First, a classical axisymmetric line vortex with a cutoff parameter is superimposed with vortex ringlets suitably placed to represent the helically wound vortex shed by the rotor tip. Thus, inclusion of axial flow is found to advect vortex core thinning away from the point of closest interaction as the vortex stretches around the cylindrical surface during the collision process. With less local thinning, vorticity in the cutoff parameter model significantly overlaps the solid cylinder in an unphysical manner, highlighting the fact that the vortex core must deform from its original cylindrical shape. A second model is then developed in which axial and azimuthal vorticity are confined within a rectangular-section vortex. Area and aspect ratio of this vortex can be varied independently to simulate deformation of the vortex core. Both axial velocity and core deformation are shown to be important to calculate the local induced pressure loads properly. The computational results are compared with experiments conducted at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Beschreibung: In this article we present new experimental and theoretical results which were obtained for the flow between two concentric cylinders, with the inner one rotating and in the presence of an axial, stable density stratification. This system is characterized by two control parameters: one destabilizing, the rotation rate of the inner cylinder; and the other stabilizing, the stratification. Two oscillatory linear stability analyses assuming axisymmetric flow conditions are presented. First an eigenmode linear stability analysis is performed, using the small-gap approximation. The solutions obtained give insight into the instability mechanisms and indicate the existence of a confined internal gravity wave mode at the onset of instability. In the second stability analysis, only diffusion is neglected, predicting accurately the instability threshold as well as the critical pulsation for all the stratifications used in the experiments. Experiments show that the basic, purely azimuthal flow (circular Couette flow) is destabilized through a supercritical Hopf bifurcation to an oscillatory flow of confined internal gravity waves, in excellent agreement with the linear stability anlysis. The secondary bifurcation, which takes the system to a pattern of drifting non-axisymmetric vortices, is a saddle-node bifurcation. The proposed bifurcation diagram shows a global bifurcation, and explains the discrepancies between previous experimental and numerical results. For slightly larger values of the rotation rate, weakly turbulent spectra are obtained, indicating an early appearance of weak turbulence: stationary structures and defects coexist. Moreover, in this regime, there is a large distribution of structure sizes. Visualizations of the next regime exhibit constant-wavelength structures and fluid exchange between neighbouring cells, similar to wavy vortices. Their existence is explained by a simple energy argument. The generalization of the bifurcation diagram to hydrodynamic systems with one destabilizing and one stabilizing control parameter is discussed. A qualitative argument is derived to discriminate between oscillatory and stationary onset of instability in the general case.

Beschreibung: Direct numerical simulations are performed of gravity-current fronts in the lock-exchange configuration. The case of small density differences is considered, where the Boussinesq approximations can be adopted. The key objective of the investigation is a detailed analysis of the flow structure at the foremost part of the front, where no previous high-resolution data were available. For the simulations, high-order numerical methods are used, based on spectral and spectral-element discretizations and compact finite differences. A three-dimensional simulation is conducted of a front spreading along a no-slip boundary at a Reynolds number of about 750. The simulation exhibits all features typically observed in experimental flows near the gravity-current head, including the lobe-and-cleft structure at the leading edge. The results reveal that the flow topology at the head differs from what has been assumed previously, in that the foremost point is not a stagnation point in a translating system. Rather, the stagnation point is located below and slightly behind the foremost point in the vicinity of the wall. The relevance of this finding for the mechanism behind the lobe-and-cleft instability is discussed. In order to explore the high-Reynolds-number regime, and to assess potential Reynolds-number effects, two-dimensional simulations are conducted for Reynolds numbers up to about 30 000, for both no-slip and slip (i.e. shear-stress free) boundaries. It is shown that although quantitative Reynolds-number effects persist over the whole range examined, no qualitative changes in the flow structure at the head can be observed. A comparison of the two-dimensional results with laboratory data and the three-dimensional simulation provides evidence that a two-dimensional model is able to capture essential features of the flow at the head. The simulations also show that for the free-slip case the shape of the head agrees closely with the classical inviscid theory of Benjamin.

Beschreibung: A laboratory study was carried out to directly measure the turbulence properties in a benthic boundary layer (BBL) above a uniformly sloping bottom where the BBL is energized by internal waves. The ambient fluid was continuously stratified and the steadily forced incoming wave field consisted of a confined beam, restricting the turbulent activity to a finite region along the bottom slope. Measurements of dissipation showed some variation over the wave phase, but cycle-averaged values indicated that the dissipation was nearly constant with height within the BBL. Dissipation levels were up to three orders of magnitude larger than background laminar values and the thickness of the BBL could be defined in terms of the observed dissipation variation with height. Assuming that most of the incoming wave energy was dissipated within the BBL, predicted levels of dissipation were in good agreement with the observations. Measurements were also made of density and two orthogonal components of the velocity fluctuations at discrete heights above the bottom. Cospectral estimates of density and velocity fluctuations showed that the major contributions to both the vertical density flux and the momentum flux resulted from frequencies near the wave forcing frequency, rather than super-buoyancy frequencies, suggesting a strong nonlinear interaction between the incident and reflected waves close to the bottom. Within the turbulent BBL, time-averaged density fluxes were significant and negative near the wave frequencies but negligible at frequencies greater than the buoyancy frequency N. While dissipation rates were high compared to background laminar values, they were low compared to the value of ε(tr) ~ 15 ν N2, the transition value often used to assess the capacity of a stratified flow to produce mixing. Existing models relating mixing to dissipation rate rely on the existence of a positive-definite density flux at frequencies greater than N as a signature of fluid mixing and therefore cannot apply to these experiments. We therefore introduce a simple model, based on the concept of diascalar fluxes, to interpret the mixing in the stratified fluid in the BBL and suggest that this may have wider application than to the particular configuration studied here.

Beschreibung: The dependence of the Nusselt number Nu on the Rayleigh Ra and Prandtl Pr number is determined for 104 〈 Ra 〈 107 and 0.07 〈 Pr 〈 7 using DNS with no-slip upper and lower boundaries and free-slip sidewalls in a 8 x 8 x 2 box. Nusselt numbers, velocity scales and boundary layer thicknesses are calculated. For Nu there are good comparisons with experimental data and scaling laws for all the cases, including Ra(2/7) laws at Pr = 0.7 and Pr = 7 and at low Pr, a Ra(1/4) regime. Calculations at Pr = 0.3 predict a new Nu ~ Ra(2/7) regime at slightly higher Ra than the Pr = 0.07 calculations reported here and the mercury Pr = 0.025 experiments.