Graphical abstract from Yang, R., Ng, C., Chong, K., Verzicco, R. & Lohse, D. 2022 Do increased flow rates in displacement ventilation always lead to better results? J. Fluid Mech. 932, A3. doi:10.1017/jfm.2021.949.
JFM Rapids
Open capillary siphons
- Kaizhe Wang, Pejman Sanaei, Jun Zhang, Leif Ristroph
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- 09 December 2021, R1
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Flow in the inverted U-shaped tube of a conventional siphon can be established and maintained only if the tube is filled and closed, so that air does not enter. We report on siphons that operate entirely open to the atmosphere by exploiting surface tension effects. Such capillary siphoning is demonstrated by paper tissue that bridges two containers and conveys water from the upper to the lower. We introduce a more controlled system consisting of grooves in a wetting solid, formed here by pressing together hook-shaped metallic rods. The dependence of flux on siphon geometry is systematically measured, revealing behaviour different from the conventional siphon. The flux saturates when the height difference between the two container's free surfaces is large; it also has a strong dependence on the climbing height from the source container's free surface to the apex. A one-dimensional theoretical model is developed, taking into account the capillary pressure due to surface tension, pressure loss due to viscous friction, and driving by gravity. Numerical solutions are in good agreement with experiments, and the model suggests hydraulic interpretations for the observed flux dependence on geometrical parameters. The operating principle and characteristics of capillary siphoning revealed here can inform biological phenomena and engineering applications related to directional fluid transport.
Focus on Fluids
Getting the ducks in a row
- Simen Å. Ellingsen
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- 09 December 2021, F1
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Vessels – in the widest sense – travelling on a water surface continuously do work the water surrounding it, causing energy to be radiated in the form of surface waves. The concomitant resistance force, the wave resistance, can account for as much as half the total drag on the vessel, so reducing it to a minimum has been a major part of ship design research for many decades. Whether the ‘vessel’ is an ocean-going ship or a swimming duckling, the physics governing the V-shaped pattern of radiated waves behind it is in essence the same, and just as fuel economy is important for commercial vessels, it is reasonable to assume that also swimming waterfowl seek to minimise their energy expenditure. Using theory and methods from classic marine hydrodynamics, Yuan et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 928, 2021, R2) consider whether, by organising themselves optimally, ducklings in a row behind a mother duck can reduce, eliminate or even reverse their individual wave resistance. They describe two mechanisms which they term ‘wave riding’ and ‘wave passing.’ The former is intuitive: the ducklings closest to the mother can receive a forward push by riding its mother's stern waves. The latter is perhaps a more striking phenomenon: when the interduckling distance is precisely right, every duckling in the row can, in principle, swim without wave resistance due to destructive wave interference. The phenomenon appears to be the same as motivates the recent US military research project Sea Train, a row of unmanned vehicles travelling in row formation.
JFM Papers
Rheology of mobile sediment beds in laminar shear flow: effects of creep and polydispersity
- Christoph Rettinger, Sebastian Eibl, Ulrich Rüde, Bernhard Vowinckel
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- 06 December 2021, A1
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Classical scaling relationships for rheological quantities such as the $\mu (J)$-rheology have become increasingly popular for closures of two-phase flow modelling. However, these frameworks have been derived for monodisperse particles. We aim to extend these considerations to sediment transport modelling by using a more realistic sediment composition. We investigate the rheological behaviour of sheared sediment beds composed of polydisperse spherical particles in a laminar Couette-type shear flow. The sediment beds consist of particles with a diameter size ratio of up to 10, which corresponds to grains ranging from fine to coarse sand. The data was generated using fully coupled, grain resolved direct numerical simulations using a combined lattice Boltzmann–discrete element method. These highly resolved data yield detailed depth-resolved profiles of the relevant physical quantities that determine the rheology, i.e. the local shear rate of the fluid, particle volume fraction, total shear and granular pressure. A comparison against experimental data shows excellent agreement for the monodisperse case. We improve upon the parameterization of the $\mu (J)$-rheology by expressing its empirically derived parameters as a function of the maximum particle volume fraction. Furthermore, we extend these considerations by exploring the creeping regime for viscous numbers much lower than used by previous studies to calibrate these correlations. Considering the low viscous numbers of our data, we found that the friction coefficient governing the quasi-static state in the creeping regime tends to a finite value for vanishing shear, which decreases the critical friction coefficient by a factor of three for all cases investigated.
Optimal sensor and actuator placement for feedback control of vortex shedding
- Bo Jin, Simon J. Illingworth, Richard D. Sandberg
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- 02 December 2021, A2
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We consider linear feedback control of the two-dimensional flow past a cylinder at low Reynolds numbers, with a particular focus on the optimal placement of a single sensor and a single actuator. To accommodate the high dimensionality of the flow, we compute its leading resolvent forcing and response modes to enable the design of $\mathcal {H}_2$-optimal estimators and controllers. We then investigate three control problems: (i) optimal estimation (OE) in which we measure the flow at a single location and estimate the entire flow; (ii) full-state information control (FIC) in which we measure the entire flow but actuate at only one location; and (iii) the overall feedback control problem in which a single sensor is available for measurement and a single actuator is available for control. We characterize the performance of these control arrangements over a range of sensor and actuator placements and discuss implications for effective feedback control when using a single sensor and a single actuator. The optimal sensor and actuator placements found for the OE and FIC problems are also compared with those found for the overall feedback control problem over a range of Reynolds numbers. This comparison reveals the key factors and conflicting trade-offs that limit feedback control performance.
Do increased flow rates in displacement ventilation always lead to better results?
- Rui Yang, Chong Shen Ng, Kai Leong Chong, Roberto Verzicco, Detlef Lohse
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- 02 December 2021, A3
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Indoor ventilation is essential for a healthy and comfortable living environment. A key issue is to discharge anthropogenic air contamination such as CO$_2$ gas or, of potentially more direct consequence, airborne respiratory droplets. Here, by employing direct numerical simulations, we study mechanical displacement ventilation with a wide range of ventilation rates $Q$ from 0.01 to 0.1 m$^3$ s$^{-1}$ person$^{-1}$. For this ventilation scheme, a cool lower zone is established beneath a warm upper zone with interface height $h$, which depends on $Q$. For weak ventilation, we find the scaling relation $h\sim Q^{3/5}$, as suggested by Hunt & Linden (Build. Environ., vol. 34, 1999, pp. 707–720). Also, the CO$_{2}$ concentration decreases with $Q$ within this regime. However, for too strong ventilation, the interface height $h$ becomes insensitive to $Q$, and the ambient averaged CO$_2$ concentration decreases towards the ambient value. At these values of $Q$, the concentrations of pollutants are very low and so further dilution has little effect. We suggest that such scenarios arise when the vertical kinetic energy associated with the ventilation flow is significant compared with the potential energy of the thermal stratification.
Tempered fractional LES modeling
- Mehdi Samiee, Ali Akhavan-Safaei, Mohsen Zayernouri
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- 02 December 2021, A4
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The presence of non-local interactions and intermittent signals in the homogeneous isotropic turbulence grant multi-point statistical functions a key role in formulating a new generation of large-eddy simulation (LES) models of higher fidelity. We establish a tempered fractional-order modelling framework for developing non-local LES subgrid-scale models, starting from the kinetic transport. We employ a tempered Lévy-stable distribution to represent the source of turbulent effects at the kinetic level, and we rigorously show that the corresponding turbulence closure term emerges as the tempered fractional Laplacian, $(\varDelta +\lambda )^{\alpha } (\cdot )$, for $\alpha \in (0,1)$, $\alpha \neq \frac {1}{2}$ and $\lambda >0$ in the filtered Navier–Stokes equations. Moreover, we prove the frame invariant properties of the proposed model, complying with the subgrid-scale stresses. To characterize the optimum values of model parameters and infer the enhanced efficiency of the tempered fractional subgrid-scale model, we develop a robust algorithm, involving two-point structure functions and conventional correlation coefficients. In an a priori statistical study, we evaluate the capabilities of the developed model in fulfilling the closed essential requirements, obtained for a weaker sense of the ideal LES model (Meneveau, Phys. Fluids, vol. 6, issue 2, 1994, pp. 815–833). Finally, the model undergoes the a posteriori analysis to ensure the numerical stability and pragmatic efficiency of the model.
The fate of continuous input of relatively heavy fluid at the base of a porous medium
- Herbert E. Huppert, Samuel S. Pegler
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- 02 December 2021, A5
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We evaluate theoretically and confirm experimentally the shape of the fluid envelope resulting from the input of relatively heavy fluid at a constant rate from a point source at the base of a homogeneous porous medium. In three dimensions an initially expanding hemisphere transitions into a gravity current flowing over the assumed rigid, horizontal and impermeable bottom of the porous medium. A range of increasing transition times occurs if defined by extrapolation of the relationships in the two extreme regimes (hemispherical shape and thin-layer gravity current) so that they intersect, for: the ratio of buoyancy to fluid resistance; the horizontal extent of the fluid; the ratio of height at the centre to the radius; and just the height at the centre. Corresponding results are derived for two-dimensional geometries. In this case, we conduct a series of laboratory experiments demonstrating the transition between the radial and gravity current regimes both in terms of form and propagation rate. The results are extrapolated briefly to two-layer systems, in order to begin to understand effects due to vertically heterogeneous pore structures. We sketch, and verify by experiment, that an expanding hemisphere in a lower layer can reach a much more permeable upper layer and flow through it as a gravity current, thereby uniting the two regimes.
Compressible potential flows around round bodies: Janzen–Rayleigh expansion inferences
- Idan S. Wallerstein, Uri Keshet
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- 02 December 2021, A6
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The subsonic, compressible, potential flow around a hypersphere can be derived using the Janzen–Rayleigh expansion (JRE) of the flow potential in even powers of the incident Mach number ${\mathcal {M}}_\infty$. JREs were carried out with terms polynomial in the inverse radius $r^{-1}$ to high orders in two dimensions, but were limited to order ${\mathcal {M}}_\infty ^{4}$ in three dimensions. We derive general JRE formulae for arbitrary order, adiabatic index and dimension. We find that powers of $\ln (r)$ can creep into the expansion, and are essential in the three-dimensional (3-D) sphere beyond order ${\mathcal {M}}_\infty ^{4}$. Such terms are apparently absent in the 2-D disk, as we verify up to order ${\mathcal {M}}_\infty ^{100}$, although they do appear in other dimensions (e.g. at order ${\mathcal {M}}_\infty ^{2}$ in four dimensions). An exploration of various 2-D and 3-D bodies suggests a topological connection, with logarithmic terms emerging when the flow is simply connected. Our results have additional physical implications. They are used to improve the hodograph-based approximation for the flow in front of a sphere. The symmetry-axis velocity profiles of axisymmetric flows around different prolate spheroids are approximately related to each other by a simple, Mach-independent scaling.
Explorative gradient method for active drag reduction of the fluidic pinball and slanted Ahmed body
- Yiqing Li, Wenshi Cui, Qing Jia, Qiliang Li, Zhigang Yang, Marek Morzyński, Bernd R. Noack
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- 06 December 2021, A7
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We address a challenge of active flow control: the optimization of many actuation parameters guaranteeing fast convergence and avoiding suboptimal local minima. This challenge is addressed by a new optimizer, called the explorative gradient method (EGM). EGM alternatively performs one exploitive downhill simplex step and an explorative Latin hypercube sampling iteration. Thus, the convergence rate of a gradient based method is guaranteed while, at the same time, better minima are explored. For an analytical multi-modal test function, EGM is shown to significantly outperform the downhill simplex method, the random restart simplex, Latin hypercube sampling, Monte Carlo sampling and the genetic algorithm. EGM is applied to minimize the net drag power of the two-dimensional fluidic pinball benchmark with three cylinder rotations as actuation parameters. The net drag power is reduced by 29 % employing direct numerical simulations at a Reynolds number of $100$ based on the cylinder diameter. This optimal actuation leads to 52 % drag reduction employing Coanda forcing for boat tailing and partial stabilization of vortex shedding. The price is an actuation energy corresponding to 23 % of the unforced parasitic drag power. EGM is also used to minimize drag of the $35^\circ$ slanted Ahmed body employing distributed steady blowing with 10 inputs. 17 % drag reduction are achieved using Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulations at the Reynolds number $Re_H=1.9 \times 10^5$ based on the height of the Ahmed body. The wake is controlled with seven local jet-slot actuators at all trailing edges. Symmetric operation corresponds to five independent actuator groups at top, middle, bottom, top sides and bottom sides. Each slot actuator produces a uniform jet with the velocity and angle as free parameters, yielding 10 actuation parameters as free inputs. The optimal actuation emulates boat tailing by inward-directed blowing with velocities which are comparable to the oncoming velocity. We expect that EGM will be employed as efficient optimizer in many future active flow control plants as alternative or augmentation to pure gradient search or explorative methods.
Interaction of cavitation bubbles with the interface of two immiscible fluids on multiple time scales
- Rui Han, A-Man Zhang, Sichao Tan, Shuai Li
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- 02 December 2021, A8
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We experimentally, numerically and theoretically investigate the nonlinear interaction between a cavitation bubble and the interface of two immiscible fluids (oil and water) on multiple time scales. The underwater electric discharge method is utilized to generate a cavitation bubble near or at the interface. Both the bubble dynamics on a short time scale and the interface evolution on a much longer time scale are recorded via high-speed photography. Two mechanisms are found to contribute to the fluid mixing in our system. First, when a bubble is initiated in the oil phase or at the interface, an inertia-dominated high-speed liquid jet generated from the collapsing bubble penetrates the water–oil interface, and consequently transports fine oil droplets into the water. The critical standoff parameter for jet penetration is found to be highly dependent on the density ratio of the two fluids. Furthermore, the pinch-off of an interface jet produced long after the bubble dynamics stage is reckoned as the second mechanism, carrying water droplets into the oil bulk. The dependence of the bubble jetting behaviours and interface jet dynamics on the governing parameters is systematically studied via experiments and boundary integral simulations. Particularly, we quantitatively demonstrate the respective roles of surface tension and viscosity in interface jet dynamics. As for a bubble initiated at the interface, an extended Rayleigh–Plesset model is proposed that well predicts the asymmetric dynamics of the bubble, which accounts for a faster contraction of the bubble top and a downward liquid jet.
Dynamics and length scales in vertical convection of liquid metals
- Lukas Zwirner, Mohammad S. Emran, Felix Schindler, Sanjay Singh, Sven Eckert, Tobias Vogt, Olga Shishkina
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- 02 December 2021, A9
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Using complementary experiments and direct numerical simulations, we study turbulent thermal convection of a liquid metal (Prandtl number $\textit {Pr}\approx 0.03$) in a box-shaped container, where two opposite square sidewalls are heated/cooled. The global response characteristics like the Nusselt number ${\textit {Nu}}$ and the Reynolds number $\textit {Re}$ collapse if the side height $L$ is used as the length scale rather than the distance $H$ between heated and cooled vertical plates. These results are obtained for various Rayleigh numbers $5\times 10^3\leq {\textit {Ra}}_H\leq 10^8$ (based on $H$) and the aspect ratios $L/H=1, 2, 3$ and $5$. Furthermore, we present a novel method to extract the wind-based Reynolds number, which works particularly well with the experimental Doppler-velocimetry measurements along vertical lines, regardless of their horizontal positions. The extraction method is based on the two-dimensional autocorrelation of the time–space data of the vertical velocity.
Navigation of micro-swimmers in steady flow: the importance of symmetries
- Jingran Qiu, Navid Mousavi, Kristian Gustavsson, Chunxiao Xu, Bernhard Mehlig, Lihao Zhao
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- 02 December 2021, A10
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Marine micro-organisms must cope with complex flow patterns and even turbulence as they navigate the ocean. To survive they must avoid predation and find efficient energy sources. A major difficulty in analysing possible survival strategies is that the time series of environmental cues in nonlinear flow is complex and that it depends on the decisions taken by the organism. One way of determining and evaluating optimal strategies is reinforcement learning. In a proof-of-principle study, Colabrese et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 118, 2017, 158004) used this method to find out how a micro-swimmer in a vortex flow can navigate towards the surface as quickly as possible, given a fixed swimming speed. The swimmer measured its instantaneous swimming direction and the local flow vorticity in the laboratory frame, and reacted to these cues by swimming either left, right, up or down. However, usually a motile micro-organism measures the local flow rather than global information, and it can only react in relation to the local flow because, in general, it cannot access global information (such as up or down in the laboratory frame). Here we analyse optimal strategies with local signals and actions that do not refer to the laboratory frame. We demonstrate that symmetry breaking is required to find such strategies. Using reinforcement learning, we analyse the emerging strategies for different sets of environmental cues that micro-organisms are known to measure.
Marangoni instabilities of drops of different viscosities in stratified liquids
- Yanshen Li, Jochem G. Meijer, Detlef Lohse
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- 02 December 2021, A11
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For an immiscible oil drop immersed in a stably stratified ethanol–water mixture, a downwards solutal Marangoni flow is generated on the surface of the drop, owing to the concentration gradient, and the resulting propulsion competes against the downwards gravitational acceleration of the heavy drop. In prior work of Li et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 126, issue 12, 2021, 124502), we found that for drops of low viscosity, an oscillatory instability of the Marangoni flow is triggered once the Marangoni advection is too strong for diffusion to restore the stratified concentration field around the drop. Here we experimentally explore the parameter space of the concentration gradient and drop radius for high oil viscosities and find a different and new mechanism for triggering the oscillatory instability in which diffusion is no longer the limiting factor. For such drops of higher viscosities, the instability is triggered when the gravitational effect is too strong so that the viscous stress cannot maintain a stable Marangoni flow. This leads to a critical drop radius above which the equilibrium is always unstable. Subsequently, a unifying scaling theory that includes both the mechanisms for low and for high viscosities of the oil drops is developed. The transition between the two mechanisms is found to be controlled by two length scales: the drop radius $R$ and the boundary layer thickness $\delta$ of the Marangoni flow around the drop. The instability is dominated by diffusion for $\delta < R$ and by viscosity for $R<\delta$. The experimental results for various drops of different viscosities can well be described with this unifying scaling theory. Our theoretical description thus provides a unifying view of physicochemical hydrodynamic problems in which the Marangoni stress is competing with a stable stratification.
Linear instability of lid- and pressure-driven flows in channels textured with longitudinal superhydrophobic grooves
- Samuel D. Tomlinson, Demetrios T. Papageorgiou
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- 02 December 2021, A12
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It is known that an increased flow rate can be achieved in channel flows when smooth walls are replaced by superhydrophobic surfaces. This reduces friction and increases the flux for a given driving force. Applications include thermal management in microelectronics, where a competition between convective and conductive resistance must be accounted for in order to evaluate any advantages of these surfaces. Of particular interest is the hydrodynamic stability of the underlying basic flows, something that has been largely overlooked in the literature, but is of key relevance to applications that typically base design on steady states or apparent-slip models that approximate them. We consider the global stability problem in the case where the longitudinal grooves are periodic in the spanwise direction. The flow is driven along the grooves by either the motion of a smooth upper lid or a constant pressure gradient. In the case of smooth walls, the former problem (plane Couette flow) is linearly stable at all Reynolds numbers whereas the latter (plane Poiseuille flow) becomes unstable above a relatively large Reynolds number. When grooves are present our work shows that additional instabilities arise in both cases, with critical Reynolds numbers small enough to be achievable in applications. Generally, for lid-driven flows one unstable mode is found that becomes neutral as the Reynolds number increases, indicating that the flows are inviscidly stable. For pressure-driven flows, two modes can coexist and exchange stability depending on the channel height and slip fraction. The first mode remains unstable as the Reynolds number increases and corresponds to an unstable mode of the two-dimensional Rayleigh equation, while the second mode becomes neutrally stable at infinite Reynolds numbers. Comparisons of critical Reynolds numbers with the experimental observations for pressure-driven flows of Daniello et al. (Phys. Fluids, vol. 21, issue 8, 2009, p. 085103) are encouraging.
Laboratory-scale investigation of a periodically forced stratified basin with inclined endwalls
- Sara Marković, Vincenzo Armenio
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- 02 December 2021, A13
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We present results of numerical simulations of a stratified reservoir with a three-layer stratification, subject to an oscillating surface shear stress. We investigate the effect of sloped endwalls on mixing and internal wave adjustment to forcing within the basin, for three different periods of forcing. The simulations are carried out at a laboratory scale, using large-eddy simulation. We solve the three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations under the Boussinesq approximation using a second-order-accurate finite-volume solver. The model was validated by reproducing experimental results for the response of a reservoir to surface shear stress and resonant frequencies of internal waves. We find interesting combinations of wave modes and mixing under variation of the forcing frequencies and of the inclination of the endwalls. When the frequency of the forcing is close to the fundamental mode-one wave frequency, a resonant internal seiche occurs and the response is characterized by the first vertical mode. For forcing periods twice and three times the fundamental period, the dominant response is in terms of the second vertical mode. Adjustment to forcing via the second vertical mode is accompanied by the cancellation of the fundamental wave and energy transfer to higher-frequency waves. The study shows that the slope of the endwalls dramatically affects the location of mixing, which has a feedback on the wave field by promoting the generation of higher vertical modes.
Wall shear stress from jetting cavitation bubbles: influence of the stand-off distance and liquid viscosity
- Qingyun Zeng, Hongjie An, Claus-Dieter Ohl
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- 02 December 2021, A14
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We study systematically the cavitation-induced wall shear stress on rigid boundaries as a function of liquid viscosity $\mu$ and stand-off distance $\gamma$ using axisymmetric volume of fluid (VoF) simulations. Here, $\gamma =d/R_{max}$ is defined with the initial distance of bubble centre from the wall $d$ and the bubble equivalent radius at its maximum expansion $R_{max}$. The simulations predict accurately the overall bubble dynamics and the time-dependent liquid film thickness between the bubble and the wall prior to the collapse. The spatial and temporal wall shear stress is discussed in detail as a function of $\gamma$ and the inverse Reynolds number $1/Re$. The amplitude of the wall shear stress is investigated over a large parameter space of viscosity and stand-off distance. The inward stress is caused by the shrinking bubble and its maximum value $\tau _{mn}$ follows $\tau _{mn} Re^{0.35}=-70\gamma +110$ (kPa) for $0.5<\gamma <1.4$. The expanding bubble and jet spreading on the boundary produce an outward-directed stress. The maximum outward stress is generated shortly after impact of the jet during the early spreading. We find two scaling laws for the maximum outward stress $\tau _{mp}$ with $\tau _{mp} \sim \mu ^{0.2} h_{jet}^{-0.3} U_{jet}^{1.5}$ for $0.5\leq \gamma \leq 1.1$ and $\tau _{mp} \sim \mu ^{-0.25} h_{jet}^{-1.5} U_{jet}^{1.5}$ for $\gamma \geq 1.1$, where $U_{jet}$ is the jet impact velocity and $h_{jet}$ is the distance between lower bubble interface and wall prior to impact.
Computational and experimental study of an oil jet in crossflow: coupling population balance model with multifluid large eddy simulation
- Cosan Daskiran, Fangda Cui, Michel C. Boufadel, Ruixue Liu, Lin Zhao, Tamay Özgökmen, Scott Socolofsky, Kenneth Lee
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- 02 December 2021, A15
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Understanding the size of oil droplets released from a jet in crossflow is crucial for estimating the trajectory of hydrocarbons and the rates of oil biodegradation/dissolution in the water column. We present experimental results of an oil jet with a jet-to-crossflow velocity ratio of 9.3. The oil was released from a vertical pipe 25 mm in diameter with a Reynolds number of 25 000. We measured the size of oil droplets near the top and bottom boundaries of the plume using shadowgraph cameras and we also filmed the whole plume. In parallel, we developed a multifluid large eddy simulation model to simulate the plume and coupled it with our VDROP population balance model to compute the local droplet size. We accounted for the slip velocity of oil droplets in the momentum equation and in the volume fraction equation of oil through the local, mass-weighted average droplet rise velocity. The top and bottom boundaries of the plume were captured well in the simulation. Larger droplets shaped the upper boundary of the plume, and the mean droplet size increased with elevation across the plume, most likely due to the individual rise velocity of droplets. At the same elevation across the plume, the droplet size was smaller at the centre axis as compared with the side boundaries of the plume due to the formation of the counter-rotating vortex pair, which induced upward velocity at the centre axis and downward velocity near the sides of the plume.
Growth of vortical disturbances entrained in the entrance region of a circular pipe
- Pierre Ricco, Claudia Alvarenga
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- 02 December 2021, A16
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The development and growth of unsteady three-dimensional vortical disturbances entrained in the entry region of a circular pipe is investigated by asymptotic and numerical methods for Reynolds numbers between $1000$ and $10\,000$, based on the pipe radius and the bulk velocity. Near the pipe mouth, composite asymptotic solutions describe the dynamics of the oncoming disturbances, revealing how these disturbances are altered by the viscous layer attached to the pipe wall. The perturbation velocity profiles near the pipe mouth are employed as rigorous initial conditions for the boundary-region equations, which describe the flow in the limit of low frequency and large Reynolds number. The disturbance flow is initially primarily present within the base-flow boundary layer in the form of streamwise-elongated vortical structures, i.e. the streamwise velocity component displays an intense algebraic growth, while the cross-flow velocity components decay. Farther downstream the disturbance flow occupies the whole pipe, although the base flow is mostly inviscid in the core. The transient growth and subsequent viscous decay are confined in the entrance region, i.e. where the base flow has not reached the fully developed Poiseuille profile. Increasing the Reynolds number and decreasing the frequency causes more intense perturbations, whereas small azimuthal wavelengths and radial characteristic length scales intensify the viscous dissipation of the disturbance. The azimuthal wavelength that causes the maximum growth is found. The velocity profiles are compared successfully with available experimental data and the theoretical results are helpful to interpret the only direct numerical dataset of a disturbed pipe-entry flow.
Non-local dispersion and the reassessment of Richardson's t3-scaling law
- G.E. Elsinga, T. Ishihara, J.C.R. Hunt
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- 02 December 2021, A17
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The Richardson-scaling law states that the mean square separation of a fluid particle pair grows according to t3 within the inertial range and at intermediate times. The theories predicting this scaling regime assume that the pair separation is within the inertial range and that the dispersion is local, which means that only eddies at the scale of the separation contribute. These assumptions ignore the structural organization of the turbulent flow into large-scale shear layers, where the intense small-scale motions are bounded by the large-scale energetic motions. Therefore, the large scales contribute to the velocity difference across the small-scale structures. It is shown that, indeed, the pair dispersion inside these layers is highly non-local and approaches Taylor dispersion in a way that is fundamentally different from the Richardson-scaling law. Also, the layer's contribution to the overall mean square separation remains significant as the Reynolds number increases. This calls into question the validity of the theoretical assumptions. Moreover, a literature survey reveals that, so far, t3 scaling is not observed for initial separations within the inertial range. We propose that the intermediate pair dispersion regime is a transition region that connects the initial Batchelor- with the final Taylor-dispersion regime. Such a simple interpretation is shown to be consistent with observations and is able to explain why t3 scaling is found only for one specific initial separation outside the inertial range. Moreover, the model incorporates the observed non-local contribution to the dispersion, because it requires only small-time-scale properties and large-scale properties.
Stochastic models for the droplet motion and evaporation in under-resolved turbulent flows at a large Reynolds number
- M.A. Gorokhovski, S.K. Oruganti
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- 03 December 2021, A18
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In this work we introduce a Lagrangian stochastic model for particle motion and evaporation to be used in large-eddy simulations (LES) of turbulent liquid sprays. Effects of small-scale intermittency, usually under-resolved in LES, are explicitly included via modelling of the energy dissipation rate seen by a droplet along its trajectory. Namely, the dissipation rate is linked to the norm of the droplet sub-filtered acceleration which is included in the droplet motion equation. This norm, along with the direction of the droplet sub-filtered acceleration, is simulated as a stochastic process. With increasing Reynolds number, the distribution of the sub-filtered acceleration develops longer tails, with a slower decay in auto-correlation functions of the norm and direction of this acceleration. The stochastic models are specified for particles larger and smaller the Kolmogorov length scale. The assumption of the droplet evaporation model is similar, i.e. the evaporation rate is strongly enhanced when a droplet is subjected to very localized zones of intense velocity gradients. Thereby, the overall evaporation process is assumed to be a succession of two steady-state sub-processes with equal intensities, i.e. evaporation and vapour mixing. Then the stochastic properties of the overall evaporation rate are also controlled by fluctuations of the energy dissipation rate along the droplet path, and with increasing Reynolds number, the intensity of fluctuations of this rate is also increasing. The assessment of the presented stochastic models in LES of high-speed non-evaporating and evaporating sprays show the accurate prediction of experimental data on relatively coarser grids along with a remarkably weaker sensitivity to the grid spacing. The joint statistics and Voronoi tessellations exhibit strong intermittency of evaporation rate. The intensity of turbulence along the droplet pathway substantially promotes the vaporization rate.