Rayleigh showed that inviscid flow is unstable if the velocity profile has an inflection point in parallel flows. However, whether viscous flows is unstable or not is still not proved so far when there is an inflection point in the velocity profile. Fluid viscosity has showed dual role to the flow instability. In this paper, it is demonstrated for the first time that viscous parallel flow with inflectional velocity profile is sufficient for flow instability.
It is exactly proved that the classical Rayleigh Theorem on inflectional velocity instability is wrong which states that the necessary condition for instability of inviscid flow is the existence of an inflection point on the velocity profile. It is shown that the disturbance amplified in 2D inviscid flows is necessarily 3D. After the break down of T-S wave in 2D parallel flows, the disturbance becomes a type of spiral waves which proceed along the streamwise direction. This is just the origin of formation of streamwise vortices.
Rotational mixing, the key process in stellar evolution, transports angular momentum and chemical elements in stellar radiative zones. In the past two decades, an emphasis has been placed on the turbulent transport induced by the vertical shear instability. However, instabilities arising from horizontal shear and the strength of the anisotropic turbulent transport that they may trigger remain relatively unexplored. This paper investigates the combined effects of stable stratification, rotation, and thermal diffusion on the horizontal shear instabilities in the context of stellar radiative zone…
A linear stability analysis is performed on a tilted parallel wake in a strongly stratified fluid at low Reynolds numbers. A particular emphasis of the present study is given to the understanding of the low-Froude-number mode observed by the recent experiment (Meunier, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 699, 2012, pp. 174-197). In the limit of low Froude number, the linearised equations of motion can be reduced to the Orr-Sommerfeld equation on the horizontal plane, except the viscous term that contains vertical dissipation. Based on this equation, it is proposed that the low-Froude-number mode would be a h…
The displacement of a more viscous fluid by a less viscous one in a quasi-two dimensional geometry leads to the formation of complex fingering patterns. This fingering has been characterized by a most unstable wavelength, $λ_c$, which depends on the viscosity difference between the two immiscible fluids and sets the characteristic width of the fingers. How the finger length grows after the instability occurs is an equally important, but previously overlooked, aspect that characterizes the global features of the patterns. As the lower viscosity fluid is injected, we show that there is a stable …
Through Ginzburg-Landau and Navier-Stokes equations, we study turbulence phenomena for viscous incompresible and compressible fluids by a second order phase transition. For this model, the velocity is defined by the sum of classical and whirling components. Moreover, the laminar-turbulent transition is controlled by rotational effects of the fluid. Hence, the thermodynamic compatibility of the differential system is proved. This model can explain the turbulence by instability effects motivated by a double well potential of the Ginzburg-Landau equation. The same model is used to understand the …
We explore the laminar to turbulence transition of round jets at low Reynolds number (Re < 1000) using a novel experimental setup and linear stability theory (LST). The setup has a large domain and a low disturbance environment which increases the critical Re to approximately 500, permitting the appearance of a hitherto unknown puff-like instability (PFI). The instability is identified in the self-similar region of the jet through clean flow visualizations (FV) and further corroborated by particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements. For 400< Re <700, the flow exhibits PFI embedded in a puff-…
The new mode of instability found by Tunney et al. is studied with viscous stability theory in this article. When the high-speed boundary layer is subject to certain values of favorable pressure gradient and wall heating, a new mode becomes unstable due to the appearance of the streamwise velocity overshoot ($U(y)>U_\infty$) in the base flow. The present study shows that under practical Reynolds numbers, the new mode can hardly co-exist with conventional first mode and Mack's second mode. Due to the requirement for additional wall heating, the new mode may only lead to laminar-turbulent transi…
In a companion paper [Pitrou, Phys. Rev. E 97, 043115 (2018)], a formalism allowing to describe viscous fibers as one-dimensional objects was developed. We apply it to the special case of a viscous fluid torus. This allows to highlight the differences with the basic viscous string model and with its viscous rod model extension. In particular, an elliptic deformation of the torus section appears because of surface tension effects, and this cannot be described by viscous string nor viscous rod models. Furthermore, we study the Rayleigh-Plateau instability for periodic deformations around the per…
In 1982, in his classical work, L. Rayleigh considered the instability of a cylinder of viscous liquid under capillary force, the so-called Plateau-Rayleigh instability. In this work, in linear approximation, he obtained a dispersion equation describing the increment of this instability as a function of wavelength, the radius of cylinder, the mass density, surface tension, and viscosity of the liquid. Hundreds of authors referred to this work, but none of them used his dispersion equation in its complete form; they used only the asymptotic solutions of his equation for zero and infinitely larg…
The new proposed "energy gradient theory," which physically explains the phenomena of flow instability and turbulent transition in shear flows and has been shown to be valid for parallel flows, is extended to curved flows in this study. Then, three important theorems for fluid dynamics are deduced. These theorems are (1) Potential flow (inviscid and irrotational) is stable. (2) Inviscid rotational (nonzero vorticity) flow is unstable. (3) Velocity profile with an inflectional point is unstable when there is no work input or output to the system, for both inviscid and viscous flows. These theor…
Through the Ginzburg-Landau and the Navier-Stokes equations, we study turbulence phenomena for viscous incompressible and compressible fluids by a second order phase transition. For this model, the velocity is defined by the sum of classical and whirling components. Moreover, the laminar-turbulent transition is controlled by rotational effects of the fluid. Hence, the thermodynamic compatibility of the differential system is proved. The same model is used to understand the origins of tornadoes and their behavior and the birth of the vortices resulting from the fall of water in a vertical tube.…
The growth rate of the compressible Rayleigh-Taylor instability is studied in the presence of a background temperature gradient, $Θ$, using a normal mode analysis. The effect of $Θ$ variation is examined for three interface types corresponding to combinations of the viscous properties of the fluids (inviscid-inviscid, viscous-viscous and viscous-inviscid) at different Atwood numbers, $At$, and, when at least one of the fluids' viscosity is non-zero, as a function of the Grashof number. For the general case, the resulting ordinary differential equations are solved numerically; however, dispersi…
The process of one fluid pushing another is universally common while involving complex interfacial instabilities. Particularly, occurring in a myriad of natural and industrial processes, wavy fingering patterns frequently emerge when a less viscous fluid pushes another more viscous one, such as water invading oil, in a porous medium. Such finger-shaped interfaces producing partial displacement significantly affect the efficiency of numerous applications, for example, chromatography, printing devices, coating flows, oil-well cementing, as well as large-scale technologies of groundwater and enha…
This fluid dynamics video presents experiments and simulations of gravity-driven particulate jets in viscous fluids at low Reynolds number. An initially straight jet is shown to develop varicose modulations of its diameter as it sediments under the action of gravity. While this instability is qualitatively reminiscent of the classical Rayleigh-Plateau instability for immiscible fluids, its mechanism has yet to be understood as neither inertia nor surface tension play a role in the case of a dilute suspension at Re=0.
The Holmboe wave instability is one of the classic examples of a stratified shear instability, usually explained as the result of a resonance between a gravity wave and a vorticity wave. Historically, it has been studied by linear stability analyses at infinite Reynolds number, $Re$, and by direct numerical simulations at relatively low $Re$ in the regions known to be unstable from the inviscid linear stability results. In this paper, we perform linear stability analyses of the classical `Hazel model' of a stratified shear layer (where the background velocity and density distributions are assu…
We study the instability development during a viscous liquid drop impacting a smooth substrate, using high speed photography. The onset time of the instability highly depends on the surrounding air pressure and the liquid viscosity: it decreases with air pressure with the power of minus two, and increases linearly with the liquid viscosity. From the real-time dynamics measurements, we construct a model which compares the destabilizing stress from air with the stabilizing stress from liquid viscosity. Under this model, our experimental results indicate that at the instability onset time, the tw…
We explore the dynamics of a flexible fiber transported by a viscous flow in a Hele-Shaw cell of height comparable to the fiber height. We show that long fibers aligned with the flow experience a buckling instability. Competition between viscous and elastic forces leads to the deformation of the fiber into a wavy shape convolved by a Bell-shaped envelope. We characterize the wavelength and phase velocity of the deformation as well as the growth and spreading of the envelope. Our study of the spatio-temporal evolution of the deformation reveals a linear and absolute instability arising from a l…
A viscous instability in shearing laminar axisymmetric hydrodynamic flows around a gravitating center is described. In the linearized hydrodynamic equations written in the Boussinesq approximation with microscopic molecular transport coefficients, the instability arises when the viscous dissipation is taken into account in the energy equation. Using the local WKB approximation, we derive a third-order algebraic dispersion equation with two modes representing the modified Rayleigh modes R+ and R-, and the third X-mode. We show that in thin accretion flows the viscosity destabilizes one of the R…
Being a major limiting factor for the efficiency of various technologies, such as Enhanced Oil Recovery, the viscous fingering (or Saffman--Taylor) instability has been extensively studied, especially for simple Newtonian fluids. Here, we experimentally and theoretically demonstrate a vital control of inhibiting the viscous fingering instability for complex (yield-stress) fluids to generate a complete sweep with a flat interface. Using a rectangular tapered cell, we first experimentally show the feasibility of controlling the primary fingering instability of a complex yield-stress fluid when p…
Viscous fingering (VF) is an interfacial instability that occurs in a narrow confinement or porous medium when a less-viscous fluid pushes a more viscous one, producing finger-like patterns. Controlling the VF instability is essential to enhance the efficiency of various technological applications. However, the control of VF instability has been challenging and so far focused on simple Newtonian fluids of constant viscosity. Here, we extend to complex yield-stress fluids and examine the controlling feasibility by carrying out a linear stability analysis using a radial cell with a converging ga…
Viscous solitons are strongly non-linear surface deformations generated by blowing wind over a liquid beyond a critical viscosity. Their shape and dynamics result from a balance between wind drag, surface tension and viscous dissipation in the liquid. We investigate here the influence of the liquid viscosity in their generation and propagation. Experiments are carried out using silicon oils, covering a wide range of kinematic viscosities $ν_\ell$ between 20 and 5000~mm$^2$~s$^{-1}$. \modif{We show that, for $ν_\ell> 200$~mm$^2$~s$^{-1}$, viscous solitons are sub-critically generated from an un…
The number of splashed fingers generated by a solid projectile's impact onto a viscous liquid layer is experimentally studied. A steel sphere is dropped onto a viscous liquid pool. Then, a fingering instability occurs around the crater's rim, depending on the experimental conditions such as projectile's inertia and the viscosity of the target liquid. When the impact inertia is not sufficient, any fingering structure cannot be observed. Contrastively, if the impact inertia is too much, the random splashing is induced and the counting of fingers becomes difficult. The clear fingering instability…
A rest fluid displaced by a less viscous fluid in a porous medium triggers the so-called Saffman-Taylor instability at their contact front and hence forms complicated finger-like patterns. When the two fluids are miscible, the surface tension at their contact front vanishes, leaving the variation in viscosity dominant the contribution to the instability. The phenomena, named viscous fingering, can be studied by the analogy of a single-phase flow in the Hele-Shaw cell, a quasi-two-dimensional rectilinear plane. Viscous fingering produces complex geometrical patterns. They are important not only…
Using the anelastic approximation of linearized hydrodynamic equations, we investigate the development of axially symmetric small perturbations in thin Keplerian discs. Dispersion relation is found as a solution of general Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problem for different values of relevant physical parameters (viscosity, heat conductivity, disc semithickness). The analysis reveals the appearance of overstable mode for Prandtl parameter higher than some critical value. These modes have a viscous-convective nature and can serve as a seed for turbulence in astrophysical discs even in the absence …
A non-modal linear stability analysis (NMA) of the miscible viscous fingering in a porous medium is studied for a toy model of non-monotonic viscosity variation. The onset of instability and its physical mechanism are captured in terms of the singular values of the propagator matrix corresponding to the non-autonomous linear equations. We discuss two types of non-monotonic viscosity profiles, namely, with unfavorable (when a less viscous fluid displaces a high viscous fluid) and with favorable (when a more viscous fluid displaces a less viscous fluid) end-point viscosities. A linear stability …
We perform linear stability analyses (LSA) and direct numerical simulations (DNS) to investigate the influence of the dynamic viscosity on viscous fingering (VF) instability in miscible slices. Selecting the characteristic scales appropriately the importance of the magnitude of the dynamic viscosity of individual fluids on VF in miscible slice has been shown in the context of the transient interfacial tension. Further, we have confirmed this result for immiscible fluids and manifest the similarities between VF in immiscible and miscible slices with transient interfacial tension. In a more gene…
In the laminar mode interactions among molecules generate friction between layers of water that slide with respect to each other. This friction triggers the shear stress, which is traditionally presumed to be linearly proportional to the velocity gradient. The proportionality coefficient characterizes the viscosity of water. Remarkably, the standard Navier-Stokes model surmises that materials never fail - the transition to turbulence can only be triggered by some kinematic instability of the flow. This premise is probably the reason why the Navier-Stokes theory fails to explain the so-called s…
The behaviour of a viscous drop squeezed between two horizontal planes is treated by both theory and experiment. When the squeezing force F is constant and surface tension is neglected, the theory predicts ultimate growth of the radius a~ t^{1/8}, in excellent agreement with our experiment. Surface tension at the drop boundary is included in the analysis, although negligibly small in the squeezing experiments. The circular evolution is found to be stable under small perturbations. If the force is reversed (F < 0), so that the plates are pulled or levered apart, the boundary of the drop is subj…
We analyse the buckling stability of a thin, viscous sheet when subject to simple shear, providing conditions for the onset of the dominant out-of-plane modes using two models: (i) an asymptotic theory for the dynamics of a viscous plate and (ii) the full Stokes equations. In either case, the plate is stabilised by a combination of viscous resistance, surface tension and buoyancy relative to an underlying denser fluid. In the limit of vanishing thickness, plates buckle at a shear rate $γ/(μd)$ independent of buoyancy, where 2d is the plate thickness, $γ$ is the average surface tension between …
The `Rayleigh line' $μ=η^2$, where $μ=Ω_o/Ω_i$ and $η=r_i/r_o$ are respectively the rotation and radius ratios between inner (subscript `i') and outer (subscript `o') cylinders, is regarded as marking the limit of centrifugal instability (CI) in unstratified inviscid Taylor-Couette flow, for both axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric modes. Non-axisymmetric stratorotational instability (SRI) is known to set in for anticyclonic rotation ratios beyond that line, i.e. $η^2<μ<1$ for axially stably-stratified Taylor-Couette flow, but the competition between CI and SRI in the range $μ<η^2$ has not yet b…
We investigate the stability of radial viscous fingering (VF) in miscible fluids. We show that the instability is decided by an interplay between advection and diffusion during initial stages of flow. Using linear stability analysis and nonlinear simulations, we demonstrate that this competition is a function of the radius $r_0$ of the circular region initially occupied by the less viscous fluid in the porous medium. For each $r_0$, we further determine the stability in terms of Péclet number ($Pe$) and log-mobility ratio ($M$). The $Pe-M$ parameter space is divided into stable and unstable zo…
Using the anelastic approximation of linearised hydrodynamic equations, we investigate the development of axially symmetric small perturbations in thin Keplerian discs. The sixth-order dispersion equation is derived and numerically solved for different values of relevant physical parameters (viscosity, heat conductivity, disc semi-thickness and vertical structure). The analysis reveals the appearance of two overstable modes which split out from the classical Rayleigh inertial modes in a wide range of the parameters in both ionized and neutral gases. These modes have a viscous-convective nature…
We investigate the viscous fingering instability that arises when air is injected from the end of an oil-filled, compliant channel. We show that induced axial and transverse depth gradients foster novel pattern formation. Moreover, the steady propagation of the interface allows us to elucidate the nonlinear saturation of a fingering pattern first observed in a time-evolving system (Pihler-Puzovic et al. PRL 108, 074502, 2012): the wavelength is set by the viscous fingering mechanism, but the amplitude is inversely proportional to the tangent of the compliant wall's inclination angle.
Attention has been paid to the similarity and duality between the Gregory-Laflamme instability of black strings and the Rayleigh-Plateau instability of extended fluids. In this paper, we derive a set of simple (1+1)-dimensional equations from the Navier-Stokes equations describing thin flows of (non-relativistic and incompressible) viscous fluids. This formulation, a generalization of the theory of drop formation by Eggers and his collaborators, would make it possible to examine the final fate of Rayleigh-Plateau instability, its dimensional dependence, and possible self-similar behaviors befo…
Here we report some interesting new features of the spatio-temporal instability of the incompressible plane Couette-Poiseuille flow (CPF). First of all, this flow represents the first instance of a "non-inflectional" absolute instability, within constant-viscosity formulation, which is triggered when one of the plates moves opposite to the bulk motion. More strikingly, with further increase in the negative plate motion, the absolute instability ($\textrm{AI}$) transitions to an "upstream" convective instability ($\textrm{CI}^-$), wherein an unstable wave packet moves opposite to the direction …
We study the Hele-Shaw immiscible displacements when all surfaces tensions on the interfaces are zero. The Saffman-Taylor instability occurs when a less viscous fluid is displacing a more viscous one, in a rectangular Hele-Shaw cell. We prove that an intermediate liquid with a variable viscosity can almost suppress this instability. On the contrary, a large number of constant viscosity liquid-layers inserted between the initial fluids gives us boundless growth rates with respect to the wave numbers of perturbations. The same amount of intermediate liquid is used in both cases.
When a liquid viscous bridge between two parallel substrates is stretched by accelerating one substrate, its interface recedes in the radial direction. In some cases the interface becomes unstable. Such instability leads to the emergence of a network of fingers. In this study the mechanisms of the fingering are studied experimentally and analysed theoretically. The experimental setup allows a constant acceleration of the movable substrate with up to 180 m/s$^2$. The phenomena are observed using two high-speed video systems. The number of fingers is measured for different liquid viscosities and…
We consider the onset of Boussinesq convection in a horizontal layer of electrically conducting incompressible fluid with rigid electrically insulating horizontal boundaries. The fluid is heated from below and rotates about a vertical axis; vertical magnetic field is imposed. The instability of the trivial steady state (fluid at rest) can be monotonic or oscillatory depending on parameters of the problem (the kinematic and magnetic Prandtl, Taylor and Chandrasekhar numbers). If the Taylor number is sufficiently large, convective rolls, emerging in the monotonic instability, experience the Küpp…
The hydrodynamic viscous fingering instability can be influenced by a simple viscosity changing chemical reaction of type A+B --> C, when a solution of reactant A is injected into a solution of B and a product C of different viscosity is formed. We investigate here numerically such reactive viscous fingering in the case of a reaction decreasing the viscosity to define the optimal conditions on the chemical and hydrodynamic parameters for controlling fingering. In particular, we analyze the influence of the injection flow rate or equivalently of the Peclet number (Pe) of the problem on the effi…
A self-consistent, thermodynamic approach is employed to derive the wave energy of a magnetohydrodynamic system within the harmonic approximation and to obtain the familiar dispersion relation from the resulting equation of motion. The evolution of the system due to an external perturbation is studied by a linear response formalism, that also gives the energy absorbed by the magnetohydrodynamic system from the external field. The calculated wave energy reveals the presence of positive and negative energy waves, that coalesce together to give rise to Kelvin - Helmholtz instability of the system…
Parametrically excited standing waves are observed on a cylindrical fluid filament. These are the cylindrical analog of Faraday instability in a flat surface or spherical droplet. Using the Floquet technique, linear stability analysis has been investigated on a viscous cylindrical fluid surface, which is subjected to a time-periodic radial acceleration. Viscosity has a significant impact on the critical forcing amplitude as well as the dispersion relation of the non-axis symmetric patterns. The effect of viscosity on onset parameters of the pattern with azimuthal wavenumber, $m=1$, has shown d…
A thread of viscous fluid falling onto a moving surface exhibits a spectacular variety of types of motion as the surface speed and nozzle height are varied. For modest nozzle heights, four clear regimes are observed. For large surface speed, the thread is dragged into a stretched centenary configuration which is confined to a plane. As the surface speed is lowered, this exhibits a supercritical bifurcation to a meandering state. At very low surface speeds, the state resembles the usual coiling motion of a viscous thread falling on a stationary surface. In between the meandering and coiling reg…
The stability of a two-dimensional viscous flow between two rotating porous cylinders is studied. The basic steady flow is the most general rotationally-invariant solution of the Navier-Stokes equations in which the velocity has both radial and azimuthal components, and the azimuthal velocity profile depends on the Reynolds number. It is shown that for a wide range of the parameters of the problem, the basic flow is unstable to small two-dimensional perturbations. Neutral curves in the space of parameters of the problem are computed. Calculations show that the stability properties of this flow…
Viscous fingering occurs in the flow of two immiscible, viscous fluids between the plates of a Hele-Shaw cell. Due to pressure gradients or gravity, the initially planar interface separating the two fluids undergoes a Saffman-Taylor instability and develops finger-like structures. When one of the fluids is a ferrofluid and a perpendicular magnetic field is applied, the labyrinthine instability supplements the usual viscous fingering instability, resulting in visually striking, complex patterns. We consider this problem in a rectangular flow geometry using a perturbative mode-coupling analysis.…
Viscous Bending Mitigates the Spontaneous Meandering of Rivulets in Hele-Shaw Cells
Matière et Systèmes Complexes UMR 7057, Université Paris Cité, CNRS（复杂物质与系统联合研究实验室，巴黎西岱大学，法国国家科学研究中心）；Laboratory of Fluid Mechanics and Instabilities, EPFL（流体力学和不稳定性实验室，洛桑联邦理工学院）
Motivated by the redrawing of hot glass into thin sheets, we investigate the shape and stability of a thin viscous sheet that is inhomogeneously stretched in an imposed non-uniform temperature field. We first determine the associated base flow by solving the long-timescale stretching flow of a flat sheet as a function of two dimensionless parameters: the normalized stretching velocity $α$, and a dimensionless width of the heating zone $β$. This allows us to determine the conditions for the onset of an out-of-plane wrinkling instability stated in terms of an eigenvalue problem for a linear part…
