Weak Turbulence and Chaos for Low Prandtl Number Gravity Driven Convection in Porous Media

Low Prandtl number convection in porous media is relevant to modern applications of transport phenomena in porous media such as the process of solidification of binary alloys. The transition from steady convection to chaos is analysed by using Adomian's decomposition method to obtain an analytical solution in terms of infinite power series. The practical need to evaluate the solution and obtain numerical values from the infinite power series, the consequent series truncation, and the practical procedure to accomplish this task, transform the analytical results into a computational solution evaluated up to a finite accuracy. The solution shows a transition from steady convection to chaos via a Hopf bifurcation producing a 'solitary limit cycle which may be associated with an homoclinic explosion. This occurs at a slightly subcritical value of Rayleigh number, the critical value being associated with the loss of linear stability of the steady convection solution. Periodic windows within the broad band of parameter regime where the chaotic solution persists are identified and analysed. It is evident that the further transition from chaos to a high Rayleigh number periodic convection occurs via a period halving sequence of bifurcations.     

An Attempt to Realize Experimental Isotropic Turbulence at Low Reynolds Number

This paper presents an attempt to realize experimental isotropicturbulence at low Reynolds number. For this aim an experimentalapparatus, a turbulence chamber “Box”, was designed and built togenerate a turbulent flow field in the center of the chamber. Theturbulent airflow field was generated by eight electrical fans placedsymmetrically at the eight internal corners of the externally cubicchamber. The turbulence intensity was controlled by the fans speed.Laser Doppler velocimeter (LDV) in single and two-point velocitymeasurements was used to fully characterize the turbulent field insidethe chamber. The main results indicate that the turbulence ishomogeneous and isotropic with a quasi-zero mean velocity within aspherical region of 20 mm radius from the center of the chamber. Themeasured turbulent integral length scale was found to be constant andindependent of the turbulence intensity (or fans speed). Furthermore, anoticeable spectral inertial subrange as prescribed by the Kolmogorovtheory has not been observed at the range of Reynolds number exploredhere, where Re_λ < 100. But rather a scaling region characterized by anexponent that is lower than the Kolmogorov value, ?5/3, has beenidentified. Moreover, the value of this exponent showed no definedtrend, while the width of the inertial scaling region expands as themicroscale Reynolds number increases.     

Stability of Advective Flow in a Rotating Horizontal Incompressible Fluid Layer Heat-Insulated from Below with Rigid Boundaries at Low Prandtl Number

Fluid Dynamics - The stability of advective flow in a rotating plane horizontal incompressible fluid layer with rigid boundaries is investigated. The linear temperature distribution is specified on...     

Buoyancy Convection in Low Prandtl Number Liquids with Large Temperature Variation

Two-dimensional laminar convection in low Prandtl number liquids driven by the buoyancy force is studied. The liquid is contained in a closed square cavity with isothermal vertical walls kept at different temperatures. The top and bottom walls are assumed to be insulated. The thermal conductivity of the liquid is assumed to depend on temperature. ADI and SOR schemes are employed. The heat transfer is found to decrease appreciably across the cavity with a decrease in thermal conductivity.     

环空后台阶管道内气固两相流动的数值模拟研究

环空管道后台阶突扩流动是空气正循环钻井过程中十分重要的关键部分,直接决定了钻探岩屑是否能够顺利上返地面.本文采用Euler-Lagrange两相流研究方法,气相湍流采用Realizable k-ε模型,固相采用离散相模型(DPM),固相的湍流耗散采用随机轨道模型,对环空后台阶突扩管道内气固两相流动进行了数值模拟研究.得出了气相场大涡演变规律,在此基础上研究了不同粒径时颗粒在流道中的浓度分布规律、运动轨迹,以及速度场分布规律.这为细观框架下研究气固两相相互作用规律提供了依据.     

Effect of Rotation on the Stability of Advective Flow in a Horizontal Fluid Layer at a Small Prandtl Number

The stability of advective flow in a rotating infinite horizontal fluid layer with rigid bound-aries is investigated for a small Prandtl number Pr = 0.1 and various Taylor numbers for perturbations of the hydrodynamic type. Within the framework of the linear theory of stability, neutral curves describing the dependence of the critical Grashof number on the wave number are obtained. The behavior of finite-amplitude perturbations beyond the stability threshold is studied numerically.__________Translated from Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Academii Nauk, Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No. 2, 2005, pp. 29–38.Original Russian Text Copyright © 2005 by Schwarz.     

Revisiting URANS Computations of the Backward-facing Step Flow Using Second Moment Closures. Influence of the Numerics

Previous studies have shown that Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) computations are able to reproduce the vortex shedding behind a backward-facing step. The aim of the present work is to investigate not only the quantitative predictions of the URANS methodology concerning the characteristic frequencies, but also the amplitude of the energy of the resolved eddies, by using the Elliptic Blending Reynolds Stress Model. This innovative low-Reynolds number second moment closure reproduces the non-viscous, non-local blocking effect of the wall on the Reynolds stresses, and it is compared to the standard k − ε and LRR models using wall-functions. Consistent with previous studies, in the 2D computations shown in the present article, the vortex shedding is captured with the correct Strouhal number, when second moment closures are used. To complete these previous analyses, we particularly focus here on the energy contained in the unsteady, resolved part and its dependency on the numerical method. This energy is less than 5% of the total energy and is strongly dependent on the mesh. Using a refined mesh, surprisingly, a steady solution is obtained. It is shown that this behaviour can be linked to the very small spatial oscillations at the step corner, produced by numerical dispersion, which act as perturbations that are sufficient to excite the natural mode of the shear layer, when the local Peclet number, comparing convection and diffusion effects, is high enough. This result suggests that URANS is not appropriate to quantitatively predict the amplitude of the large-scale structures developing in separated shear-layers, and that URANS results must be interpreted with care in terms of temporal variations of forces, temperatures, etc., in industrial applications using marginally fine meshes.     

Flow Rate Prediction for a Semi-permeable Membrane at Low Reynolds Number in a Circular Pipe

Transport in Porous Media - A concise and accurate prediction method is required for membrane permeability in chemical engineering and biological fields. As a preliminary study on this topic, we...     

Hydrodynamic Interactions at Low Reynolds Number

We consider the hydrodynamic interactions of low Reynolds number microswimmers, presenting a review of recent work based upon models of linked sphere swimmers. Particular attention is paid to those aspects that are generic, applicable to all microswimmers and not only to the simple models considered. The importance of the relative phase in swimmer–swimmer interactions is emphasised, as is the role of simple symmetry arguments in both understanding and constraining the hydrodynamic properties of microswimmers.     

The Effect of the Mach Number on a Turbulent Backward-Facing Step Flow

The flow around a backward-facing step in the sub-, trans- and supersonic regimes was investigated at the Trisonic Wind Tunnel Munich with particle image velocimetry and dynamic pressure measurements. These two techniques were combined to simultaneously measure and correlate the velocity fluctuations in a streamwise vertical plane with the pressure fluctuations on the reattachment surface. The results show that the dynamic loads on the reattachment surface increase from subsonic up to the transonic regime while the mean reattachment location moves downstream. As soon as the flow becomes locally supersonic aft of the backward-facing step, the mean reattachment location suddenly moves upstream while the normalized dynamic loads drastically decrease. By correlating the velocity and the dynamic pressure data, it was shown that a clear separation between outer flow and the flow close to the surface aft of the step is responsible for the drastic load reduction. Due to the large difference in pressure/density, the disturbances from the locally supersonic flow do not have an effect on the flow close to the surface. This is also reflected in the power spectral densities of the pressure fluctuations on the surface, showing that at supersonic free-stream Mach numbers a low-frequency pumping motion of the locally subsonic flow is the dominant mode, while in sub-/transonic flow Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities and a cross-pumping motion of the shear layer dominate the dynamic loads.     

Near-Wake Turbulence Properties around a Circular Cylinder at High Reynolds Number

The present study investigates the turbulent properties of the flow around a circular cylinder in the near-wake and in the near-wall upstream region at the Reynolds number 140,000. A detailed cartography of the mean and turbulent velocity fields using a moderate blockage and aspect ratio is provided in order to use the present results for direct comparisons with realisable 3D Navier-Stokes computations. The flow structure is analysed by means of two experiments using respectively the LDV and the PIV techniques, both providing a refined grid of measurement points. The dynamics of the separation region, the growth and decay of turbulence in the near wake, as well as the spatial growth of the organised mode are analysed.     

On Large-Scale Friction Control in Turbulent Wall Flow in Low Reynolds Number Channels

The present study reconsiders the control scheme proposed by Schoppa & Hussain (Phys. Fluids 10, 1049–1051 1998), using a new set of numerical simulations. The computations are performed in a turbulent channel at friction Reynolds numbers of 104 (the value employed in the original study) and 180. In particular, the aim is to better characterise the physics of the control as well as to investigate the optimal parameters. The former purpose lead to a re-design of the control strategy: moving from a numerical imposition of the mean flow to the application of a volume force. A comparison between the two is presented. Results show that the original method only gave rise to transient drag reduction. The forcing method, on the other hand, leads to sustained drag reduction, and thus shows the superiority of the forcing approach for all wavelengths investigated. A clear maximum efficiency in drag reduction is reached for the case with a viscous-scaled spanwise wavelength of the vortices of 1200, which yields a drag reduction of 18 %, as compared to the smaller wavelength of 400 suggested as the most efficient vortex in Schoppa & Hussain. Various turbulence statistics are considered, in an effort to elucidate the causes of the drag-reducing effect. For instance, a region of negative production was found, which is quite unusual for developed turbulent channel flow.     

Effect of Large Scale 3-D Structures on the Flow Around a Heated Cylinder at Low Reynolds Number

This work presents results of flow around a heated circular cylinder in mixed convection regime and demonstrates that Prandtl number and angle of attack of the incoming flow have a large influence on the characterisation of the flow transition from 2-D to 3-D. Previous studies show that heat transfer can enhance the formation of large 3-D structures in the wake of the cylinder for Reynolds numbers between 75 and 127 and a Richardson number larger than 0.35. This transitional mode is generally identified as “mode E”. In this work, we compare the results for water-based flow (large Prandtl number) with the ones for air-based flows (low Prandtl number). The comparison is carried out at two Reynolds numbers (100 and 150) and at a fixed Richardson number of 1. It shows that at the low Reynolds number of 100 the low Prandtl number flow does not enter into transition. This is caused by the impairment of the baroclinic vorticity production provoked by the spanwise temperature gradient. At low Prandtl number temperature gradients are less steep. For an air-based flow at Reynolds number 150, several Richardson numbers have been simulated. In this situation, the flow enters into transition and exhibits the characteristics of “mode E”, with the development of Λ-shaped structures in the near wake and mushroom-like structures in the far wake. It is also observed that the transition is delayed at Richardson number of 0.5. Simulations are also carried to investigate the effect of the angle of attack on the incoming flow on the development of large coherent structures. When the angle of attack is positive, the development of the wake tends to return to a more bi-dimensional configuration, where large scale coherent structures are impaired. In contrast, when the angle of attack is negative, large scale tri-dimensional structures dominate the flow in the wake, but with a very chaotic behaviour and the regular pattern of zero angle of attack is destroyed. The different behaviour of the flow with the variation of the angle of attack is also related to the baroclinic vorticity production, where new terms appear in the equations, leading to a positive effect of the vorticity production in case of a negative angle of attack and the opposite for a positive angle of attack.     

Thin Shear Layer Structures in High Reynolds Number Turbulence

Three-dimensional tomographic time dependent PIV measurements of high Reynolds number (Re) laboratory turbulence are presented which show the existence of long-lived, highly sheared thin layer eddy structures with thickness of the order of the Taylor microscale and internal fluctuations. Highly sheared layer structures are also observed in direct numerical simulations of homogeneous turbulence at higher values of Re (Ishihara et al., Annu Rev Fluid Mech 41:165–180, 2009). But in the latter simulation, where the fluctuations are more intense, the layer thickness is greater. A rapid distortion model describes the structure and spectra for the velocity fluctuations outside and within ‘significant’ layers; their spectra are similar to the Kolmogorov (C R Acad Sci URSS 30:299–303, 1941) and Obukhov (Dokl Akad Nauk SSSR 32:22–24, 1941) statistical model (KO) for the whole flow. As larger-scale eddy motions are blocked by the shear layers, they distort smaller-scale eddies leading to local zones of down-scale and up-scale transfer of energy. Thence the energy spectrum for high wave number k is $E_X (k)\sim Bk^{-2p}$ . The exponent p depends on the forms of the large eddies. The non-linear interactions between the distorted inhomogeneous eddies produce a steady local structure, which implies that 2p?=?5/3 and a flux of energy into the thin-layers balancing the intense dissipation, which is much greater than the mean $\left<\epsilon\right>$ . Thence $B\sim\left<\epsilon\right>^{2/3}$ as in KO. Within the thin layers the inward flux energises extended vortices whose thickness and spacing are comparable with the viscous microscale. Although peak values of vorticity and velocity of these vortices greatly exceed those based on the KO scaling, the form of the viscous range spectrum is consistent with their model.     

测量低密度气流速度和运动激波马赫数的火花放电法

本文在讨论了各种测量气流速度的方法,特别是Miller的放电法基础上,提出了一种测量低密度流场气流速度和运动激波马赫数的改进方法。本方法采用双曝光技术,有助于提高测量精度;在结构上和电路上的改进,克服了低密度流场中漏电问题。该方法适用于气流速度1200m/s以上,密度约0.05kg/cm~3的高速瞬态流场中的气流速度和运动激波马赫数的测量。     

Numerical Study of Turbulence and Noise in Chevrons Nozzles at the Mach Number Equal to 0.25

Fluid Dynamics - Turbulent jet flows at the Mach number equal to 0.25 from an industrial nozzle are studied using the large eddy simulation (LES). The feasibility of controlling the jet flow and...     

Near-Wake Turbulence Properties in the High Reynolds Number Incompressible Flow Around a Circular Cylinder Measured by Two- and Three-Component PIV

The main objective of the present experimental study is to analyse the turbulence properties in unsteady flows around bluff body wakes and to provide a database for improvement and validation of turbulence models, concerning the present class of non-equilibrium flows. The flow around a circular cylinder with a low aspect ratio () and a high blockage coefficient () is investigated. This confined environment is used in order to allow direct comparisons with realisable 3D Navier–Stokes computations avoiding ‘infinite’ conditions. The flow is investigated in the critical regime at Reynolds number 140,000. A cartography of the velocity fields in the near wake of the cylinder is obtained by PIV and Stereoscopic PIV techniques. Statistical means and phase-averaged quantities are determined. Furthermore, POD analysis is performed on the data set in order to extract coherent structures of the flow and to compare the results with those obtained by the conditional sampling technique. The Reynolds stresses, the strain-rate and vorticity fields as well as the turbulence production terms are determined.     

On the Accuracy of Upwind and Symmetric TVD Schemes in Simulating Low Mach Number Flow

The accuracy of MUSCL upwind and Yee-Roe-Davis symmetric TVD schemes for simulating low Mach number flow is studied through a numerical experiment of the 2-D lid driven cavity problem. The steady slate solution is reached by using a marching approach based on the pseudocompressibilty method in conjunction with implicit approximate factorization. A finite volume discretization of the conservation equations is used with a four level multigrid method to accelerate the convergence. The tests performed which were in the range of 100 ≤ Re ≤ 5000, show that the Yee-Roe-Davis symmetric scheme generates results in very good agreement with the benchmark results over this range of Re. The MUSCL upwind scheme accuracy deteriorates with the increasing Re.     

Application of Differing Forcing Function Models on Simulated Flow Past an Oscillating Cylinder in a Uniform Low Reynolds Number Flow

A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model is presented for the uniform viscous two dimensional flow past an oscillating cylinder at low Reynolds number. Numerical simulations are made to study the effect of differing forced induced oscillation mechanisms with a large range of cylinder forcing frequencies. In the first case sinusoidal velocity slip boundary conditions are adopted for the cylinder surface to simulate cylinder oscillation. The implication suggests that no modification or additional term need to be added to the Navier-Stokes equations. In the second case this time extra body force terms which are assumed to account for velocity effects due to cylinder movement are included in the Navier-Stokes equations with the imposition of same boundary conditions. Drag and lift coefficients are extracted from present numerical results and other detailed computations of these coefficients are made at a Reynolds number of 80 and an amplitude-to diameter ratio 0.14. The results are found to be in agreement with each other at low force driving frequencies below and near lock-in. However, differences are found at higher frequencies above lock-in. Agreement are also found with experimental results at some frequency ranges.     

Vertical Motions of Heavy Inertial Particles Smaller than the Smallest Scale of the Turbulence in Strongly Stratified Turbulence

We study the statistics of the vertical motion of inertial particles in strongly stratified turbulence. We use Kinematic Simulation (KS) and Rapid Distortion Theory (RDT) to study the mean position and the root mean square (rms) of the position fluctuation in the vertical direction. We vary the strength of the stratification and the particle inertial characteristic time. The stratification is modelled using the Boussinesq equation and solved in the limit of RDT. The validity of the approximations used here requires that $ \sqrt{{L}/{g}} < {2\pi}/{\mathcal{N}} < \tau_{\eta} $ , where τ _η is the Kolmogorov time scale, g the gravitational acceleration, L the turbulence integral length scale and $\mathcal{N}$ the Brunt–Väisälä frequency. We introduce a drift Froude number $Fr_{d} = \tau_p g / \mathcal{N} L$ . When Fr _d ?<?1, the rms of the inertial particle displacement fluctuation is the same as for fluid elements, i.e. $\langle(\zeta_3 - \langle \zeta_3 \rangle)^2\rangle^{1/2} = 1.22\, u'/\mathcal{N} + \mbox{oscillations}$ . However, when Fr _d ?>?1, $\langle(\zeta_3 - \langle \zeta_3 \rangle)^2\rangle^{1/2} = 267 \, u' \tau_p$ . That is the level of the fluctuation is controlled by the particle inertia τ _p and not by the buoyancy frequency $\mathcal{N}$ . In other words it seems possible for inertial particles to retain the vertical capping while loosing the memory of the Brunt–Väisälä frequency.