Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-m9pkr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T12:41:12.911Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Instability in flow through elastic conduits and volcanic tremor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2005

NEIL J. BALMFORTH
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia, 1984 Mathematics Road, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2, Canada Department of Earth & Ocean Sciences, University of British Columbia, 6339 Stores Road, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada
R. V. CRASTER
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Imperial College, London SW7 2BZ, UK
A. C. RUST
Affiliation:
Department of Earth & Ocean Sciences, University of British Columbia, 6339 Stores Road, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

Abstract

The stability of fluid flow through a narrow conduit with elastic walls is explored, treating the fluid as incompressible and viscous, and the walls as semi-infinite linear Hookean solids. Instabilities analogous to roll waves occur in this system; we map out the physical regime in which they are excited. For elastic wave speeds much higher than the fluid speed, a critical Reynolds number is required for instability. However, that critical value depends linearly on wavenumber, and so can be made arbitrarily small for long waves. For smaller elastic wave speeds, the critical Reynolds number is reduced still further, and Rayleigh waves can be destabilized by the fluid even at zero Reynolds number. A brief discussion is given of the nonlinear dynamics of the instabilities for large elastic wave speed, and the significance of the results to the phenomenon of volcanic tremor is presented. Although magma itself seems unlikely to generate flow-induced vibrations, the rapid flow through fractured rock of low-viscosity fluids exsolved from magma appears to be a viable mechanism for volcanic tremor.

Type
Papers
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)