In this work a simple problem on 2D optimal shape for body immersed in a viscous flow is analyzed. The body has geometrical constraints and its profile would be found in the class of cubics which satisfy those conditions. The optimal profile depends on the leading coefficient of these cubics and its relation with the Reynolds number of the system is found. The solution to the problem uses a method based on a suitable transformation rule for the cartesian reference.
We consider small oscillations of micro-particles and gaseous bubbles in viscous fluid around equilibrium states under the action of a sinusoidal external force. Exact solutions to the governing integro-differential equations containing both Stokes and memory-integral drag forces are obtained. The main aim of this study is to clarify the influence of the memory-integral drag force on the resonance characteristics of oscillating particles or gaseous bubbles in a viscous fluid at small Reynolds numbers. The resonant curves (amplitude versus frequency of external force), as well as phase-frequenc…
In experimental study of very high Reynolds number turbulence, we found evidences that there are distinguished vortex structures in the intermediate range, that is, between the Kolmogorov and Taylor microscales, where they are indeed expected to be present. These structures are responsible for the intermittency, and, in the same time, they contribute into asymmetry of turbulent statistics, the latter following from the Kolmogorov law.
Swimming at small Reynolds number of a linear assembly of identical spheres immersed in a viscous fluid is studied on the basis of a set of equations of motion for the individual spheres. The motion of the spheres is caused by actuating forces and forces derived from a direct interaction potential, as well as hydrodynamic forces exerted by the fluid as frictional and added mass hydrodynamic interactions. The swimming velocity is deduced from the momentum balance equation for the assembly of spheres, and the mean power required during a period is calculated from an instantaneous power equation.…
In this visualisation, the transition from laminar to turbulent flow is characterised by the intermittent ejection of wall fluid into the outer stream. The normalised thickness of the viscous flow layer reaches an asymptotic value but the physical thickness drops exponentially after transition. The critical transition pipe Reynolds number can be obtained simply by equating it with the asymptotic value of the normalised thickness of viscous flow layer. Key words: Transition, critical stability Reynolds number, critical transition Reynolds number, non-Newtonian pipe flow
Direct numerical simulation is performed to study compressible, viscous flow around a circular cylinder. The present study considers two-dimensional, shock-free continuum flow by varying the Reynolds number between 20 and 100 and the freestream Mach number between 0 and 0.5. The results indicate that compressibility effects elongate the near wake for cases above and below the critical Reynolds number for two-dimensional flow under shedding. The wake elongation becomes more pronounced as the Reynolds number approaches this critical value. Moreover, we determine the growth rate and frequency of …
Translational and rotational swimming at small Reynolds number of a planar assembly of identical spheres immersed in an incompressible viscous fluid is studied on the basis of a set of equations of motion for the individual spheres. The motion of the spheres is caused by actuating forces and forces derived from a direct interaction potential, as well as hydrodynamic forces exerted by the fluid as frictional and added mass hydrodynamic interactions. The translational and rotational swimming velocities of the assembly are deduced from momentum and angular momentum balance equations. The mean pow…
A scaling relation for the high frequency regime of streamwise energy spectra (in frequency domain) in the near-wall region is proposed. This is based on the dimensional analysis approach of \cite{perry1977} and \cite{Zamalloa2014} together with the hypothesis that the small-scale fluctuations in the near-wall region should only depend on the viscous scales, analogous to the Prandtl's law-of-the-wall for the mean flow. This allows us to examine the lower bound for the high frequency regime where law-of-the-wall in spectra would hold. Observations in high-Reynolds-number turbulent boundary laye…
It has been known for some time that some microorganisms can swim faster in high-viscosity gel-forming polymer solutions. These gel-like media come to mimic highly viscous heterogeneous environment that these microorganisms encounter in-vivo. The qualitative explanation of this phenomena first offered by Berg and Turner [Nature (London) 278, 349 (1979)], suggests that propulsion enhancement is a result of flagellum pushing on quasi-rigid loose polymer network formed in some polymer solutions. Inspired by these observations, inertia-less propulsion in a heterogeneous viscous medium composed of …
New scaling relations for the mean velocity and Reynolds shear stress in viscous sublayer were proposed based on the application of matched asymptotic expansion method to the mean momentum balance. It was shown that the new parameter $Λ_+$ is relevant for the wall turbulence in addition to the friction velocity. From the proposed new scaling of the viscous sublayer the power law for the mean velocity in the overlap region was derived. The complete or incomplete similarity of the parameter $Λ_+$ was shown to be the key factor, which determines whether the mean velocity obeys the power law or lo…
Above a critical field strength, the free surface of an electrified, perfectly conducting viscous liquid, such as a liquid metal, is known to develop an accelerating protrusion resembling a cusp with a conic tip. Field self-enhancement from tip sharpening is reported to generate divergent power law growth in finite time of the forces acting in that region. Previous studies have established that tip sharpening proceeds via a self-similar process in two distinct limits - the Stokes regime at $\textsf{Re}=0$ and the inviscid regime $\textsf{Re} \to \infty$. Using finite element simulations to tra…
Conventionally, a microscopic particle that performs a reciprocal stroke cannot move through its environment. This is because at small scales, the response of simple Newtonian fluids is purely viscous and flows are time-reversible. We show that by contrast, fluid elasticity enables propulsion by reciprocal forcing that is otherwise impossible. We present experiments on rigid objects actuated reciprocally in viscous fluids, demonstrating for the first time a purely elastic propulsion set by the object's shape and boundary conditions. We describe two different artificial "swimmers" that experime…
Near-wall turbulent velocities in turbulent channel flows are decomposed into small-scale and large-scale components at $y^+<100$ by improving the predictive inner-outer model of Baars et al. [Phys. Rev. Fluids 1, 054406 (2016)], where $y^+$ is the viscous-normalized wall-normal height. The small-scale one is obtained by reducing the outer reference height (a parameter in the model) from the center of the logarithmic layer to $y^+=100$, which can fully remove outer influences. On the other hand, the large-scale one represents the near-wall footprints of outer energy-containing motions. We pres…
The rise of a single bubble confined between two vertical plates is investigated over a wide range of Reynolds numbers. In particular, we focus on the evolution of the bubble speed, aspect ratio and drag coefficient during the transition from the viscous to the inertial regime. For sufficiently large bubbles, a simple model based on power balance captures the transition for the bubble velocity and matches all the experimental data despite strong time variations of bubble aspect ratio at large Reynolds numbers. Surprisingly, bubbles in the viscous regime systematically exhibit an ellipse elonga…
We discuss the scaling laws for the flow generated in a viscous fluid by a wave propagating along a solid boundary. This has applications to the displacement of tiny objects on solids, under the effect of progressive surface waves and for the swimming of microanimals by undulation of ciliae along their body surface.
Viscous flow past a finite plate which is impulsively started in direction normal to itself is studied numerically using a high order mixed finite difference and semi-Lagrangian scheme. The goal is to resolve details of the vorticity generation at early times, and to determine the effect of viscosity on flow quantities such as the core trajectory and vorticity, and the shed circulation. Vorticity contours, streaklines and streamlines are presented for a range of Reynolds numbers $Re \in [250, 2000]$ and a range of times $t \in[0. 0002, 5]$. At early times, most of the vorticity is attached to …
In recent years, open systems with balanced loss and gain, that are invariant under the combined parity and time-reversal ($\mathcal{PT}$) operations, have been studied via asymmetries of their solutions. They represent systems as diverse as coupled optical waveguides and electrical or mechanical oscillators. We numerically investigate the asymmetries of incompressible viscous flow in two and three dimensions with "balanced" inflow-outflow ($\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric) configurations. By introducing configuration-dependent classes of asymmetry functions in velocity, kinetic energy density, and vo…
Explicit expressions are derived for the matrices determining the mean translational and rotational swimming velocities and the mean rate of dissipation for Stokesian swimming at low Reynolds number of a distorting sphere in a viscous incompressible fluid. As an application an efficient helical propeller-type stroke is found and its properties are calculated.
We extend the procedure outlined in [Basse, "Scaling of global properties of fluctuating and mean streamwise velocities in pipe flow: Characterization of a high Reynolds number transition region," Phys. Fluids Vol. 33, 065127 (2021)] to study global, i.e. radially averaged, scaling of streamwise velocity fluctuations. A viscous term is added to the log-law scaling which leads to the existence of a mathematical abstraction which we call the "global peak". The position and amplitude of this global peak are characterized and compared to the inner and outer peaks. A transition at a friction Reynol…
We present an asymptotic theory for analytical characterization of the high-Reynolds-number incompressible flow of a Newtonian fluid past a shear-free circular cylinder. The viscosity-induced modifications to this flow are localized and except in the neighborhood of the rear stagnation point, behave like a linear perturbation of the inviscid flow. Our theory gives a highly accurate description of these modifications by including the contribution from the most significant viscous term in a correctional perturbation expansion about an inviscid base state. We derive the boundary layer equation fo…
The normal-mode analysis of the Reynolds-Orr energy equation governing the stability of viscous motion for general three-dimensional disturbances has been revisited. The energy equation has been solved as an unconstrained minimization problem for the Couette-Poiseuille flow. The minimum Reynolds number for every Couette-Poiseuille velocity profile has been computed and compared with those available in the literature. For fully three-dimensional disturbances, it is shown that the minimum Reynolds number is in general smaller than the corresponding two-dimensional counterpart for all the Couette…
Unsteady Lifting-Line Theory (ULLT) is a low order method capable of modeling interacting unsteady and finite wing effects at low computational cost. Most formulations of the method assume inviscid flow and small amplitudes. Whilst these assumptions might be suitable for small-amplitude aeroelastic problems at high Reynolds numbers, modern engineering applications increasingly involve lower Reynolds numbers, large amplitude kinematics and vortex structures that lead to aerodynamic non-linearities. This paper establishes that ULLT still provides a good solution for low Reynolds number, large-am…
Shock reflection experiments are performed to study the large-scale convective mixing created by the forward jetting phenomenon. Experiments are performed at a wedge angle of $θ_{\mathrm{w}} = 30^{\circ}$ in nitrogen, propane-oxygen, and hexane with incident shock Mach numbers up to $M = 4$. Experiments are complimented by shock-resolved viscous simulations of triple point reflection in hexane for $M = 2.5$ to $6$. Inviscid simulations are performed over a wider range of parameters. Reynolds numbers up to $Re \lesssim 10^3$ are covered by simulations and Reynolds numbers of $Re \sim 10^5$ are …
Reynolds similitude, a key concept in hydrodynamics, states that two phenomena of different length scales with a similar geometry are physically identical. Flow properties are universally determined in a unified way in terms of the Reynolds number ${\cal R}$ (dimensionless, ratio of inertial to viscous forces in incompressible fluids). For example, the drag coefficient $c_D$ of objects with similar shapes moving in fluids is expressed by a universal function of ${\cal R}$. Certain studies introduced similar dimensionless numbers, that is, the superfluid Reynolds number ${\cal R}_s$, to charact…
In this work, low Reynolds number turbulent flow through a corrugated channel, formed by standard V-groove riblets, are investigated via direct numerical simulations (DNS). The simulations attempt to assess the variation of flow dynamics caused by a change in the characteristic size of the V-groove riblets. Such characterization of size effects provides a means to identify the local flow features arising from fluid-riblet interaction, and to investigate their relevance to the change in viscous drag and turbulence statistics. The present simulations confirmed an improved variation trend when th…
We study the laminar and turbulent channel flow over a viscous hyper-elastic wall and show that it is possible to sustain an unsteady chaotic turbulent-like flow at any Reynolds number by properly choosing the wall elastic modulus. We propose a physical explanation for this effect by evaluating the shear stress and the turbulent kinetic energy budget in the fluid and elastic layer. We vary the bulk Reynolds number from 2800 to 10 and identify two distinct mechanisms for turbulence production. At moderate and high Reynolds numbers, turbulent fluctuations activate the wall oscillations, which, i…
The aim of this Letter is to characterize the flow regimes of suspensions of finite-size rigid particles in a viscous fluid at finite inertia. We explore the system behavior as function of the particle volume fraction and the Reynolds number (the ratio of flow and particle inertia to viscous forces). Unlike single phase flows where a clear distinction exists between the laminar and the turbulent states, three different regimes can be identified in the presence of a particulate phase, with smooth transitions between them. At low volume fractions, the flow becomes turbulent when increasing the R…
Mixing in fluids is a rapidly developing field of fluid mechanics \cite{Sreen,Shr,War}, being an important industrial and environmental problem. The mixing of liquids at low Reynolds numbers is usually quite weak in simple flows, and it requires special devices to be efficient. Recently, the problem of mixing was solved analytically for a simple case of random flow, known as the Batchelor regime \cite{Bat,Kraich,Fal,Sig,Fouxon}. Here we demonstrate experimentally that very viscous liquids at low Reynolds number, $Re$. Here we show that very viscous liquids containing a small amount of high mol…
Using the previously developed model to describe laminar/turbulent states of a viscous fluid flow, which treats the flow as a collection of coherent structures of various size (Chekmarev, Chaos, 2013, 013144), the statistical temperature of the flow state is determined as a function of the Reynolds number. It is shown that at small Reynolds numbers, associated with laminar states, the temperature is positive, while at large Reynolds numbers, associated with turbulent states, it is negative. At intermediate Reynolds numbers, the temperature changes from positive to negative as the size of the c…
It is shown that the addition of small amounts of microscopic rods in a viscous fluid at low Reynolds number causes a significant increase of the flow resistance. Numerical simulations of the dynamics of the solution reveal that this phenomenon is associated to a transition from laminar to chaotic flow. Polymer stresses give rise to flow instabilities which, in turn, perturb the alignment of the rods. This coupled dynamics results in the activation of a wide range of scales, which enhances the mixing efficiency of viscous flows.
The reflection of a triple-shock configuration was studied numerically in two dimensions using the Navier-Stokes equations. The flow field was initialized using three shock theory, and the reflection of the triple point on a plane of symmetry was studied. The conditions simulated a stoichiometric methane-oxygen detonation cell at low pressure on time scales preceding ignition, when the gas was assumed to be inert. Viscosity was found to play an important role on some shock reflection mechanisms believed to accelerate reaction rates in detonations when time scales are small. A small wall jet wa…
Helical propulsion is used by many microorganisms to swim in viscous-dominated environments. Their swimming dynamics are relatively well understood, but detailed study of the flow fields and actuation mechanisms are still needed to realize wall effects and hydrodynamic interactions. In this letter, we describe the development of an autonomous swimming robot with a helical tail that operates in the Stokes regime. The device uses a battery-based power system with a miniature motor that imposes a rotational speed to a helical tail. The speed, direction, and activation are controlled electronicall…
It is evident from the literature that many engineers describe the Reynolds number qualitatively as ``the ratio of inertial forces to viscous forces''. Yet it is not immediately obvious that the well known expression Re = LV(rho)/(eta), which involves the size L of a solid object moving with speed V relative to a fluid of density rho and viscosity eta--is in fact a ratio of forces. It is hoped that the following treatment, which is based on an energy rather than force perspective, will help to de-mystify the important parameter given to us by Osborne Reynolds
A number of new closed-form fundamental solutions for the generalized unsteady Oseen and Stokes flows associated with arbitrary time-dependent translational and rotational motions have been developed. These solutions are decomposed into two parts corresponding to a longitudinal wave and a transversal wave. As examples of application, the hydrodynamic force acting on a sphere or on a circular cylinder translating in an unsteady flow field at low Reynolds numbers are calculated using the new generalized fundamental solutions. The results for a rotating viscous flow past an impulsively moving sph…
The equations in conservative form for nonlinear waves modeling on a liquid film flowing down a vertical plane have been investigated. It has been found that in the computational domain extended along the transverse axis the equations with boundary conditions are invariant under parity transformation. It is numerically shown that for moderate Reynolds numbers the steady-state travelling solutions of the equations have the detected symmetry. It is demonstrated that using this symmetry for the numerical solution of the problem by Galerkin methods significantly increases the efficiency of calcula…
Turbulence may appear as a complex process with a multitude of scales and flow patterns, but still obeys simple physical principles such as the conservation of momentum, of energy, and the maximum entropy principle. The latter states that the energy distribution will tend toward the maximum entropy under physical constraints, such as the zero energy at the boundaries and viscous dissipation. For the turbulence energy spectra, a distribution function that maximizes entropy with the physical constraints is a log-normal function, which agrees well with the experimental data over a large range of …
A special initial condition for (1+1)-dimensional Burgers equation is considered. It allows to obtain new analytical solutions for an arbitrary low viscosity as well as for the inviscid case. The viscous solution is written as a rational function provided the Reynolds number (a dimensionless value inversely proportional to the viscosity) is a multiple of two. The inviscid solution is expressed in radicals. Asymptotic expansion of the viscous solution at infinite Reynolds number is compared against the inviscid case. All solutions are finite, tend to zero at infinity and therefore are physicall…
The boundary layer structure of the velocity and temperature fields in turbulent Rayleigh-Benard flows in closed cylindrical cells of unit aspect ratio is revisited from a transitional and turbulent viscous boundary layer perspective. When the Rayleigh number is large enough, the dynamics at the bottom and top plates can be separated into an impact region of downwelling plumes, an ejection region of upwelling plumes and an interior region away from the side walls. The latter is dominated by the shear of the large-scale circulation (LSC) roll which fills the whole cell and continuously varies i…
Motivated by recent advances in vesicle engineering, we consider theoretically the locomotion of shape-changing bilayer vesicles at low Reynolds number. By modulating their volume and membrane composition, the vesicles can be made to change shape quasi-statically in thermal equilibrium. When the control parameters are tuned appropriately to yield periodic shape changes which are not time-reversible, the result is a net swimming motion over one cycle of shape deformation. For two classical vesicle models (spontaneous curvature and bilayer coupling), we determine numerically the sequence of vesi…
We report an experimental study of the properties of the velocity boundary layer in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection in a cylindrical cell. The measurements were made at Rayleigh numbers $Ra$ in the range $2.8\times10^{8}<Ra<5.6\times10^{9}$ and were conducted with the convection cell tilted with an angle $θ$ relative to gravity, at $θ=0.5^{o}$, $1.0^{o}$, $2.0^{o}$, and $3.4^{o}$, respectively. The fluid was water with Prandtl number $Pr=5.3$. It is found that at small tilt angles ($θ\le 1^{o}$), the measured viscous boundary layer thickness $δ_{v}$ scales with the Reynolds number $Re$ wi…
The variances of the fluid-particle acceleration and of the pressure-gradient and viscous force are given. The scaling parameters for these variances are velocity statistics measureable with a single-wire anemometer. For both high and low Reynolds numbers, asymptotic scaling formulas are given; these agree quantitatively with DNS data. Thus, the scaling can be presumed known for all Reynolds numbers. Fluid-particle acceleration variance does not obey K41 scaling at any Reynolds number; this is consistent with recent experimental data. The non-dimensional pressure-gradient variance named lambda…
We develop a one-dimensional model for the unsteady fluid--structure interaction (FSI) between a soft-walled microchannel and viscous fluid flow within it. A beam equation, which accounts for both transverse bending rigidity and nonlinear axial tension, is coupled to a one-dimensional fluid model obtained from depth-averaging the two-dimensional incompressible Navier--Stokes equations across the channel height. Specifically, the Navier--Stokes equations are scaled in the viscous lubrication limit relevant to microfluidics. The resulting set of coupled nonlinear partial differential equations i…
Three dimensional simulations on the viscous folding in diverging microchannels reported by Cubaud and Mason are performed using the parallel code BLUE for multi-phase flows. The more viscous liquid L_1 is injected into the channel from the center inlet, and the less viscous liquid L_2 from two side inlets. Liquid L_1 takes the form of a thin filament due to hydrodynamic focusing in the long channel that leads to the diverging region. The thread then becomes unstable to a folding instability, due to the longitudinal compressive stress applied to it by the diverging flow of liquid L_2. Given th…
The swimming of an assembly of rigid spheres immersed in a viscous fluid of infinite extent is studied in low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The instantaneous swimming velocity and rate of dissipation are expressed in terms of the time-dependent displacements of sphere centers about their collective motion. For small amplitude swimming with periodically oscillating displacements, optimization of the mean swimming speed at given mean power leads to an eigenvalue problem involving a velocity matrix and a power matrix. The corresponding optimal stroke permits generalization to large amplitude mot…
The effect of Prandtl number on the evolution of Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) billows and the amount of mixing they generate is studied through direct numerical simulation (DNS). The results indicate that the time evolution of the rate of mixing through different stages of the life-cycle of KH flow is significantly influenced by the Prandtl number. As the Prandtl number increases, the final amount of mixing increases for Reynolds that are too low to support active three-dimensional motions. This trend is the opposite in sufficiently high Reynolds number KH flows that can overcome viscous effects, and…
We study the dynamics of a dilute solution of rigid rodlike polymers in a viscous fluid at low Reynolds number by means of numerical simulations of a simple rheological model. We show that the rotational dynamics of polymers destabilizes the laminar flow and causes the emergence of a turbulent-like chaotic flow with a wide range of active scales. This regime displays an increased flow resistance, corresponding to a reduced mean flow at fixed external forcing, as well as an increased mixing efficiency. The latter effect is quantified by measuring the decay of the variance of a scalar field tran…
