Some new characteristics of the confined flow over circular cylinders at low reynolds numbers

This study summarises some new characteristics of the fluid flow over a confined circular cylinder at low Reynolds numbers. Results from both two- and three-dimensional direct numerical simulations are presented at blockage ratio between 0.1 and 0.9 and Reynolds number between 120 and 500. Floquet stability analysis of selected cases will also be presented. From the two-dimensional simulations, it is found that the fluctuating lift forces decreases with blockage ratio and becomes zero (where the flow is steady) at blockage ratio of approximately 0.7–0.8. Upon further increasing the blockage ratio to 0.9, the simulations show a dramatic increase in the fluctuating lift forces, nearly an order of magnitude greater than previously reported for an unconfined cylinder flow. It is also found that for blockage ratio of 0.5, there is a long term two-dimensional instability that becomes more prominent with increasing Reynolds number. This instability has a time scale of approximately 105 time units ($D/U_{\mathit{max}}$) at Reynolds number of 500. In addition, the transition between two- and three-dimensional flow at blockage ratios up to 0.5 is investigated. It is shown that the transition Reynolds number decreases with increasing blockage ratio. At high blockage ratio of 0.5, as we increase the Reynolds number, the transition to three-dimensional flow is shown to go from unsteady two-dimensional to steady three-dimensional before transitioning to unsteady three-dimensional flow.     

Interaction of a heavy fluid flow in a channel with a transverse jet barrier

An experimental and numerical analysis of the interaction between a plane horizontal water flow in a rectangular channel (free water current) and a plane thin water jet (water jet curtain) is presented; the jet flows out vertically from either a slot nozzle in the bottom of the channel or the crest of a rigid spillway at a velocity appreciably (several times) greater than the water velocity in the channel. Numerical calculations were carried out using the STAR-CD software package preliminarily tested against the experimental data obtained. The dependence of the water level in the channel at a certain distance ahead of the jet barrier on the main jet parameters and the water flow rate in the horizontal channel is studied. It is found that in the region of the interface between the flows both steady and unsteady (self-oscillatory) flow patterns can be realized. Steady stream/jet interaction patterns of the “ejection” and “ejection-spillway” types are distinguished and a criterion separating these regimes is obtained. The notion of a rigid spillway equivalent to a jet curtain is introduced and an approximate dependence of its height on the relevant parameters of the problem is derived. The possibility of effectively controlling the water level ahead of a rigid spillway with a sharp edge by means of a plane water jet flowing from its crest is investigated. The boundary of transition to self-oscillation interaction patterns in the region of the flow interface is determined. The structure of these flows and a possible mechanism of their generation are described. Within the framework of the inviscid incompressible fluid model in the approximate formulation for a “thin” jet, an analytical dependence of the greatest possible depth of a reservoir filled with a heavy fluid at rest and screened by a vertical jet barrier on the jet parameters is obtained.     

Local flows of a deformable damageable medium under impact interaction with a cavitating fluid

Local viscoplastic-flow and damage processes in a deformable medium induced by the collapse of dispersed vapor-gas bubbles in the near-wall layer of a cavitating fluid in the presence of propagating shock waves are investigated. The study is based on a generalized model developed for describing nonlinear deformations and flow of damageable media and on the results obtained earlier for local fluid flows induced by limiting transitions of vapor-gas bubbles.     

Numerical investigation of the first transition in the three-dimensional problem of convective flow in a porous medium

The branching off of steady-state regimes from mechanical equilibrium is studied for the problem of filtration convection in a parallelepiped. The conditions for the geometric parameters under which stable continuous families of steady-state regimes develop are found. The stability of equilibria of the family with respect to three-dimensional perturbations is analyzed in a numerical experiment using a finite-difference method.     

Existence and asymptotic properties of solutions for a nonlinear Schrödinger elliptic equation from geophysical fluid flows

In this paper, we study the existence and asymptotic behavior of radial solutions for a class of nonlinear Schrödinger elliptic equations on infinite domains describing the gyre of geophysical fluid flows. The existence theorem and asymptotic properties of radial positive solutions are established by using a new renormalization technique.     

A matrix-free high-order discontinuous Galerkin compressible Navier-Stokes solver: A performance comparison of compressible and incompressible formulations for turbulent incompressible flows

Both compressible and incompressible Navier-Stokes solvers can be used and are used to solve incompressible turbulent flow problems. In the compressible case, the Mach number is then considered as a solver parameter that is set to a small value, M ≈0.1, in order to mimic incompressible flows. This strategy is widely used for high-order discontinuous Galerkin (DG) discretizations of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. The present work raises the question regarding the computational efficiency of compressible DG solvers as compared to an incompressible formulation. Our contributions to the state of the art are twofold: Firstly, we present a high-performance DG solver for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations based on a highly efficient matrix-free implementation that targets modern cache-based multicore architectures with Flop/Byte ratios significantly larger than 1. The performance results presented in this work focus on the node-level performance, and our results suggest that there is great potential for further performance improvements for current state-of-the-art DG implementations of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Secondly, this compressible Navier-Stokes solver is put into perspective by comparing it to an incompressible DG solver that uses the same matrix-free implementation. We discuss algorithmic differences between both solution strategies and present an in-depth numerical investigation of the performance. The considered benchmark test cases are the three-dimensional Taylor-Green vortex problem as a representative of transitional flows and the turbulent channel flow problem as a representative of wall-bounded turbulent flows. The results indicate a clear performance advantage of the incompressible formulation over the compressible one.     

Dynamics of pulsatile flows through microtubes from nonlocality

In this paper we introduce a new notion of complexified nonlocal-in-time-space material derivative operator and we discuss its implications in fluid mechanics. After deriving the complexified fluid equations, we investigate the problem of laminar flow of a particle fluid in a microtube. We demonstrate the occurrence of pulsatile flows through microtubes in agreement with recent findings.     

On power-law fluids with the power-law index proportional to the pressure

In this short note we study special unsteady flows of a fluid whose viscosity depends on both the pressure and the shear rate. Here we consider an interesting dependence of the viscosity on the pressure and the shear rate; a power-law of the shear rate wherein the exponent depends on the pressure. The problem is important from the perspective of fluid dynamics in that we obtain solutions to a technologically relevant problem, and also from the point of view of mathematics as the analysis of the problem rests on the theory of spaces with variable exponents. We use the theory to prove the existence of solutions to generalizations of Stokes’ first and second problem.     

Strong solutions to 3D compressible magnetohydrodynamic equations with Navier‐slip condition

We consider the short time strong solutions to the compressible magnetohydrodynamic equations with initial vacuum, in which the velocity field satisfies the Navier‐slip condition. The Navier‐slip condition differs in many aspects from no‐slip conditions, and it has attracted considerable attention in nanoscale and microscale flows research. Inspired by Kato and Lax's idea, we use the Lax–Milgram theorem and contraction mapping argument to prove local existence. Moreover, under the Navier‐slip condition, we establish a criterion for possible breakdown of such solutions at finite time in terms of the temporal integral of L^∞ norm of the deformation tensor D(u). Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.