Integral representation of velocity in a flow with separation simulated by a vortex sheet

The goal of this paper is to present a new integral operator that defines the velocity of a streamline flow in terms of the intensity of a free vortex sheet. This operator is important for numerical simulation of flows.     

Non-isothermal spherical Couette flow of Oldroyd-B fluid

The present paper is concerned with non-isothermal spherical Couette flow of Oldroyd-B fluid in the annular region between two concentric spheres. The inner sphere rotates with a constant angular velocity while the outer sphere is kept at rest. The viscoelasticity of the fluid is assumed to dominate the inertia such that the latter can be neglected in the momentum and energy equations. An approximate analytical solution is obtained through the expansion of the dynamical variable fields in power series of Nahme number. Non-homogeneous, harmonic for axial- velocity and temperature equations and biharmonic for stream function equations, have been solved up to second order approximation. In comparison of the present work with isothermal case; [1,2], two additional terms; a first order velocity and a second order stream function are stem as a result of the interaction between the fluid viscoelasticity and temperature profile. These contributions prove to be the most important results for rheology in this work.     

Natural convective boundary-layer flow in a heat generating porous medium with a prescribed wall heat flux

The free convection boundary-layer flow on a vertical surface in a porous medium with local heat generation proportional to (T – T_∞)^p, where T is the local temperature and T_∞ is the ambient temperature, is considered when the surface is thermally insulated. The way in which the flow develops from the leading edge is seen to depend critically on the exponent p. For p ≤ 2 there is a boundary-layer flow for all x > 0, where x measures distance from the leading edge, with the internal heating having a significant effect at large x. For p ≥ 5 there is also a boundary-layer flow to large x but now the internal heating has an increasingly weaker effect as x increases. For 2 < p <  5 the boundary-layer solution breaks down at a finite x, with a singularity developing leading to thermal runaway at a finite distance along the surface.     

On a conjecture of Schmutz

In this work we discuss Schmutz’s conjecture that in dimension 2 to 8 the distinct norms that occur in the lattices with the best known sphere packings are strictly greater than those in any other lattice of the same covolume. We see that the ternary conjecture is not true. However, it seems that there is but one exception: one lattice, where for one length the conjecture fails. Received: 11 February 2008, Revised: 20 May 2008     

Effects of suction/blowing on the lower branch modes of the incompressible boundary layer flow due to a rotating-disk

In this study a theoretical approach is pursued to investigate the effects of suction and blowing on the structure of the lower branch neutral stability modes of three-dimensional small disturbances imposed on the incompressible von Karman’s boundary layer flow induced by a rotating-disk. Particular interest is placed upon the short-wavelength, non-linear and nonstationary crossflow vortex modes developing within the presence of suction/blowing at sufficiently high Reynolds numbers with reasonably small scaled frequencies. Following closely the asymptotic framework introduced in [1], the role of suction on the non-linear disturbances of the lower branch described first in [2] for the stationary modes only, is extended in order to obtain an understanding of the behavior of non-stationary perturbations. The analysis using the rational asymptotic technique based on the triple-deck theory enables us to derive initially an eigenrelation which describes the evolution of linear modes. The asymptotic linear modes calculated at high Reynolds number limit are found to be destabilizing as far as the non-parallelism accounted by the approach is concerned, and they compare fairly well with the numerical results generated directly by solving the linearized system with the usual parallel flow approximation. An amplitude equation is derived next to account for the effects of non-linearity. Even though the form of this equation is the same as that of found in [2] for no suction, it is under the strong influence of suction and blowing. This amplitude equation is shown to be adjusted by a balance between viscous and Coriolis forces, and it describes the evolution of not only the stationary but also the non-stationary modes for both suction and injection applied at the disk surface. A close investigation of the amplitude equation shows that the non-linearity is highly destabilizing for both positive and negative frequency waves, though finite amplitude growth of a disturbance having positive frequency close to the neutral location is more effective at destabilization of the flow under consideration. Finally, a smaller initial amplitude of a disturbance is found to be sufficient for the non-linear amplification of the modes in the case of suction, whereas a larger amplitude is required if injection is active on the surface of the disk.     

On the thermodynamics of fluids defined by implicit constitutive relations

In this paper, we develop a thermodynamically consistent theory for describing the response of nonlinear viscous fluids whose constitutive equations are of the form f (T, D) = 0. We show that such constitutive equations which include classical constitutive equations wherein the stress is expressed explicitly in terms of the kinematical quantities, provide a rich class of physically meaningful fluid response functions which allows us to describe a wider range of material behavior, including that of a general class of incompressible fluids, incompressible fluids with pressure dependent viscosity, and Bingham (or pseudoplastic) materials.     

A nonlinear stability analysis for rotating magnetized ferrofluid heated from below saturating a porous medium

A nonlinear (energy) stability analysis is performed for a rotating magnetized ferrofluid layer heated from below saturating a porous medium, in the stress-free boundary case. By introducing a generalized energy functional, a rigorous nonlinear stability result for a thermoconvective rotating magnetized ferrofluid is derived. The mathematical emphasis is on how to control the nonlinear terms caused by magnetic body force. It is found that the nonlinear critical stability magnetic thermal Rayleigh number does not coincide with that of linear instability analysis, and thus indicates that the subcritical instabilities are possible. However, it is noted that, in case of non-ferrofluid, global nonlinear stability Rayleigh number is exactly the same as that for linear instability. For lower values of magnetic parameters, this coincidence is immediately lost. The effect of magnetic parameter, M ₃, medium permeability, D _a , and rotation, , on subcritical instability region has also been analyzed. It is shown that with the increase of magnetic parameter, M ₃, and Darcy number, D _a , the subcritical instability region between the two theories decreases quickly while with the increase of Taylor number, , the subcritical region expands. We also demonstrate coupling between the buoyancy and magnetic forces in the presence of rotation in nonlinear energy stability analysis as well as in linear instability analysis.      

On a Bernoulli-integrable magnetohydrodynamic system

A geometric procedure is used to isolate four Bernoulli integrals for a nonlinear, two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic system. The general solution of the latter may thereby be constructed.     

A p-adic analogue of a formula of Ramanujan

During his lifetime, Ramanujan provided many formulae relating binomial sums to special values of the Gamma function. Based on numerical computations, Van Hamme recently conjectured p-adic analogues to such formulae. Using a combination of ordinary and Gaussian hypergeometric series, we prove one of these conjectures. Received: 11 April 2008     

Three-dimensional flow of a Jeffery fluid over a linearly stretching sheet

This investigation reports the three-dimensional flow of Jeffrey fluid over a linearly stretching surface. Transformation method has been utilized for the reduction of partial differential equations into the ordinary differential equations. The solutions of the nonlinear systems are presented by a homotopy analysis method (HAM). The reported graphical results are analyzed. A comparative study with the previous results of viscous fluid in the literature is made.     

Ext-symmetry over quantum complete intersections

We show that symmetry in the vanishing of cohomology holds for graded modules over quantum complete intersections. Moreover, symmetry holds for all modules if the algebra is symmetric. Received: 1 December 2008     

Plastic flow in very low temperature regime within annular micropores

The rate of deformation for glassy (amorphous) matter confined in microscopic domain at very low temperature regime was investigated using a rate-state-dependent model considering the shear thinning behavior which means, once material being subjected to high shear rates, the viscosity diminishes with increasing shear rate. The preliminary results show that there might be the enhanced rate of deformation and (shear) yield stress due to the almost vanishing viscosity in micropores subjected to some surface conditions: The relatively larger roughness (compared to the macroscopic domain) inside micropores and the slip. As the pore size decreases, the surface-to-volume ratio increases and therefore, surface roughness will greatly affect the (plastic) flow in micropores. By using the boundary perturbation method, we obtained a class of microscopic fields for the rate of deformation and yield stress at low temperature regime with the presumed small wavy roughness distributed along the walls of an annular micropore.     

Young measure flow as a model for damage

Models for hysteresis in continuum mechanics are studied that rely on a time-discretised quasi-static evolution of Young measures akin to a gradient flow. The main feature of this approach is that it allows for local, rather than global minimisation. In particular, the case of a non-coercive elastic energy density of Lennard-Jones type is investigated. The approach is used to describe the formation of damage in a material; existence results are proved, as well as several results highlighting the qualitative behaviour of solutions. Connections are made to recent variational models for fracture.      

Infinite Classes of Dihedral Snarks

Flower snarks and Goldberg snarks are two infinite families of cyclically 5–edge–connected cubic graphs with girth at least five and chromatic index four. For any odd integer k, k > 3, there is a Flower snark, say J _k , of order 4k and a Goldberg snark, say B _k , of order 8k. We determine the automorphism groups of J _k and B _k for every k and prove that they are isomorphic to the dihedral group D _4k of order 4k. Research performed within the activity of INdAM–GNSAGA with the financial support of the Italian Ministry MIUR, project “Strutture Geometriche, Combinatoria e loro Applicazioni”.     

Quadrature Domains with Infinite Volume

We discuss quadrature domains for subharmonic functions and prove the existence of core quadrature domains for certain positive measures. The core quadrature domains are the smallest quadrature domains as measures and inherit good properties from quadrature domains with finite volume. We next discuss new balayage for the class of harmonic functions integrable in a neighborhood of ∞. We give several estimates of balayage measures. The new balayage is introduced to construct quadrature domains for harmonic functions. Submitted: June 26, 2008. Accepted: July 24, 2008.     

Estimates for Littlewood-Paley Functions and Extrapolation

We prove certain L ^p -estimates for Littlewood-Paley functions arising from rough kernels. The estimates are useful for extrapolation to prove L ^p -boundedness of the Littlewood-Paley functions under a sharp kernel condition.      

Hardy-Littlewood system and representations of integers by an invariant polynomial

Let f be an integral homogeneous polynomial of degree d, and let be the level set for each . For a compact subset in ), set

Distance sets corresponding to convex bodies

Suppose that is a 0-symmetric convex body which denes the usual norm

Maximal subnear-rings of functions

For a group G, let M(G) denote the near-ring of functions on G. We characterize all maximal subnear-rings of M(G) and show that for many classes of groups, E(G), the near-ring generated by the semigroup, End(G) of G, is never maximal as a subnear-ring of M ₀ (G). Received: 25 April 2008     

Nonlinear electroelastostatics: a variational framework

Different formulations of the constitutive laws and governing equations for nonlinear electroelastic solids are reviewed and two new variational principles for electroelastostatics are introduced. One is based on use of the electrostatic scalar potential and one on the vector potential, combined with the deformation function. In each case Lagrangian forms of the electric variables are used. Their connections with several formulations of nonlinear electroelasticity in the literature are established and some differences highlighted.