Efficient computation of the spectrum of viscoelastic flows

The understanding of viscoelastic flows in many situations requires not only the steady state solution of the governing equations, but also its sensitivity to small perturbations. Linear stability analysis leads to a generalized eigenvalue problem (GEVP), whose numerical analysis may be challenging, even for Newtonian liquids, because the incompressibility constraint creates singularities that lead to non-physical eigenvalues at infinity. For viscoelastic flows, the difficulties increase due to the presence of continuous spectrum, related to the constitutive equations.The Couette flow of upper convected Maxwell (UCM) liquids has been used as a case study of the stability of viscoelastic flows. The spectrum consists of two discrete eigenvalues and a continuous segment with real part equal to ?1/We (We is the Weissenberg number). Most of the approximations in the literature were obtained using spectral expansions. The eigenvalues close to the continuous part of the spectrum show very slow convergence.In this work, the linear stability of Couette flow of a UCM liquid is studied using a finite element method. A new procedure to eliminate the eigenvalues at infinity from the GEVP is proposed. The procedure takes advantage of the structure of the matrices involved and avoids the computational overhead of the usual mapping techniques. The GEVP is transformed into a non-degenerate GEVP of dimension five times smaller. The computed eigenfunctions related to the continuous spectrum are in good agreement with the analytic solutions obtained by Graham [M.D. Graham, Effect of axial flow on viscoelastic Taylor–Couette instability, J. Fluid Mech. 360 (1998) 341].     

On the stability of geophysical flows

Summary The stability of the solution of two-dimensional stationary Euler equations for rotating flows with a constant Coriolis force is studied. An Arnold theorem in which some sufficient conditions for the stability are given was used for this purpose. This theorem can be applied to a large class of geophysical flows.

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Riassunto Si è studiata la stabilità delle soluzioni per le equazioni di Eulero stazionarie bidimensionali nel caso di un flusso in rotazione con una forza di Coriolis costante. A tal fine si è fatto uso di un teorema, dovuto ad Arnold, nel quale sono date le condizioni sufficienti per la stabilità del moto. Questo teorema può essere applicato ad una vasta classe di flussi geofisici.

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Work supported by a CNR grant. Progetto Finalizzato Oceanografia.     

Superdiffusion and viscoelastic vortex flows in a two-dimensional complex plasma

Viscoelastic vortical fluid motion in a strongly coupled particle system has been observed experimentally. Optical tracking of particle motion in a complex plasma monolayer reveals high grain mobility and large scale vortex flows coexistent with partial preservation of the global hexagonal lattice structure. The transport of particles is superdiffusive and ascribed to Lévy statistics on short time scales and to memory effects on the longer scales influenced by cooperative motion. At these longer time scales, the transport is governed by vortex flows covering a wide spectrum of temporal and spatial scales.     

Viscous effects on motion and heating of electrons in inductivelycoupled plasma reactors

A transport model is developed for nonlocal effects on motion and heating of electrons in inductively coupled plasma reactors. The model is based on the electron momentum equation derived from the Boltzmann equation, retaining anisotropic stress components which in fact are viscous stresses. The resulting model consists of transport equations for the magnitude of electron velocity oscillation and terms representing energy dissipation due to viscous stresses in the electron energy equation. In this model, electrical current is obtained in a nonlocal manner due to viscous effects, instead of Ohm's law or the electron momentum equation without viscous effects, while nonlocal heating of electrons is represented by the viscous dissipation. Computational results obtained by two-dimensional numerical simulations show that nonlocal determination of electrical current indeed is important, and viscous dissipation becomes an important electron heating mechanism at low pressures. It is suspected that viscous dissipation in inductively coupled plasma reactors in fact represents stochastic heating of electrons, and this possibility is exploited by discussing physical similarities between stochastic heating and energy dissipation due to the stress tensor     

A Reynolds stress model for turbulent flows of viscoelastic fluids

A second-order closure is developed for predicting turbulent flows of viscoelastic fluids described by a modified generalised Newtonian fluid model incorporating a nonlinear viscosity that depends on a strain-hardening Trouton ratio as a means to handle some of the effects of viscoelasticity upon turbulent flows. Its performance is assessed by comparing its predictions for fully developed turbulent pipe flow with experimental data for four different dilute polymeric solutions and also with two sets of direct numerical simulation data for fluids theoretically described by the finitely extensible nonlinear elastic – Peterlin model. The model is based on a Newtonian Reynolds stress closure to predict Newtonian fluid flows, which incorporates low Reynolds number damping functions to properly deal with wall effects and to provide the capability to handle fluid viscoelasticity more effectively. This new turbulence model was able to capture well the drag reduction of various viscoelastic fluids over a wide range of Reynolds numbers and performed better than previously developed models for the same type of constitutive equation, even if the streamwise and wall-normal turbulence intensities were underpredicted.     

Continuous transitions between discontinuous magnetohydrodynamic flows of plasma and its heating

The possibility that the type of discontinuous flow changes as the conditions gradually (continuously) change is investigated in connection with the problems arising when the results of numerical simulations of magnetic reconnection in plasma are interpreted. The conservation laws at a discontinuity surface in magnetohydrodynamics admit such transitions, but the so-called transition solutions for the boundary conditions that simultaneously satisfy two types of discontinuities should exist in this case. The specific form of such solutions has been found, and a generalized scheme of permitted transitions has been constructed on their basis. An expression for the jump in internal energy at discontinuity is derived. The dependence of the plasma heating efficiency on the type of discontinuity is considered.     

Comparative study on aerodynamic heating under perfect and nonequilibrium hypersonic flows

In this study, comparative heat flux measurements for a sharp cone model were conducted by utilizing a high enthalpy shock tunnel JF-10 and a large-scale shock tunnel JF-12, responsible for providing nonequilibrium and perfect gas flows, respectively. Experiments were performed at the Key Laboratory of High Temperature Gas Dynamics(LHD), Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Corresponding numerical simulations were also conducted in effort to better understand the phenomena accompanying in these experiments. By assessing the consistency and accuracy of all the data gathered during this study, a detailed comparison of sharp cone heat transfer under a totally different kind of freestream conditions was build and analyzed. One specific parameter, defined as the product of the Stanton number and the square root of the Reynold number, was found to be more characteristic for the aerodynamic heating phenomena encountered in hypersonic flight. Adequate use of said parameter practically eliminates the variability caused by the deferent flow conditions, regardless of whether the flow is in dissociation or the boundary condition is catalytic. Essentially, the parameter identified in this study reduces the amount of ground experimental data necessary and eases data extrapolation to flight.     

Gravitational stability of vertically moving system: Viscous layer and inviscid half-space

The evolution of small initial perturbations is investigated in a system consisting of a heavy layer of a Newtonian viscous fluid covering a half-space of an ideal fluid with another density. The entire system can move as a rigid entity in the vertical direction according to some prescribed law. By using the apparatus of linearization of the equations and the boundary conditions, the characteristic equation is derived and the high-viscosity limit, in which the two parameters determining the stability are the thinning and the overload, is treated analytically.     

Negative stiffness-induced extreme viscoelastic mechanical properties: stability and dynamics

Use of negative stiffness inclusions allows one to exceed the classic bounds upon overall mechanical properties of composite materials. We here analyse discrete viscoelastic ‘spring’ systems with negative stiffness elements to demonstrate the origin of extreme properties, and analyse the stability and dynamics of the systems. Two different models are analysed: one requires geometrical nonlinear analysis with pre-load as a negative stiffness source and the other is a linearized model with a direct application of negative stiffness. Material linearity is assumed for both models. The metastability is controlled by a viscous element. In the stable regime, extreme high mechanical damping tan?δ can be obtained at low frequency. In the metastable regime, singular resonance-like responses occur in tan?δ. The pre-stressed viscoelastic system is stable at the equilibrium point with maximal overall compliance and is metastable when tuned for maximal overall stiffness. A reversal in the relationship between the magnitude of complex modulus and frequency is also observed. The experimental observability of the singularities in tan?δ is discussed in the context of designed composites and polycrystalline solids with metastable grain boundaries.     

On the stability of certain collisional configurations of hydromagnetic flows

We study the flow of a hydromagnetic fluid toward an obstacle in two different cases: when this is a rigid wall or when two plasma masses collide with each other. The magnetic field far from the obstacle is assumed to be aligned with the flow. The diffusivity is taken as low, and a boundary layer approach for the stationary MHD system is considered. The relevant equations turn out to be a generalization of the Falkner-Skan ones, and while analytical solutions are impossible to obtain, a qualitative analysis shows that whenever the size of the Alfvén speed far from the interface exceeds the size of the fluid velocity, the system has no nontrivial solutions. The interpretation of this is that in this case disturbances occurring in the boundary layer travel upstream and disturb the boundary conditions at the outer layers.     

Effect of shock heating on the stability of laser-driven targets

The shock heating of a laser-driven, direct-drive target can determine its stability by affecting Rayleigh-Taylor growth rates through target decompression and ablative stabilization. Measurements indicate that pulses that rise rapidly to 10(14) W/cm(2) produce shock-induced temperatures of approximately 25 eV, whereas more slowly rising pulses show less heating. Analysis of the observed target behavior produced by these two pulses demonstrates that shock heating improves hydrodynamic stability because ablative stabilization increases when the targets are preheated by shocks.     

Global stability analysis of fluid flows using sum-of-squares

This paper introduces a new method for proving global stability of fluid flows through the construction of Lyapunov functionals. For finite dimensional approximations of fluid systems, we show how one can exploit recently developed optimization methods based on sum-of-squares decomposition to construct a polynomial Lyapunov function. We then show how these methods can be extended to infinite dimensional Navier-Stokes systems using robust optimization techniques. Crucially, this extension requires only the solution of infinite-dimensional linear eigenvalue problems and finite-dimensional sum-of-squares optimization problems.We further show that subject to minor technical constraints, a general polynomial Lyapunov function is always guaranteed to provide better results than the classical energy methods in determining a lower-bound on the maximum Reynolds number for which a flow is globally stable, if the flow does remain globally stable for Reynolds numbers at least slightly beyond the energy stability limit. Such polynomial functions can be searched for efficiently using the SOS technique we propose.     

Linear and non-linear stability of melt flows in magnetic fields

This review considers the stability of melt motion in two simplified models of semiconductor crystal growth by either vertical gradient freeze (VGF) or Czochralski (Cz) processes under the influence of various magnetic fields. In VGF the crystal is grown at the bottom of the crucible, resulting in a stable thermal stratification of the melt. The presence of a stabilizing temperature gradient surprisingly decreases the stability of the flow driven by a rotating magnetic field (RMF). The instability of the travelling magnetic field (TMF)-driven flow, in contrast, is significantly delayed by thermal stratification in VGF. The TMF may, thus, be used in VGF to control the shape of the solidification interface or the radial dopant distribution without causing undesirable flow oscillations. The crystal is pulled out from the melt in the Cz process, producing an unstable temperature gradient below the crystal. The RMF is able to force the resulting unstable buoyant flow into a state of small-scale, high-frequency turbulence that may be regarded as stable for practical purposes. This effect is experimentally observed over a wide range of Grashof numbers, up to 10⁹, characteristic for a large Cz system.     

Nonlinear stability and instability of transonic flows through a nozzle

We study transonic flows along a nozzle based on a one-dimensional model. It is shown that flows along the expanding portion of the nozzle are stable. On the other hand, flows with standing shock waves along a contracting duct are dynamically unstable. This was conjectured by the author based on the study of noninteracting wave patterns. The author had shown earlier that supersonic and subsonic flows along a duct with various cross sections are stable. Basic to our analysis are estimates showing that shock waves tend to decelerate along an expanding duct and accelerate along a contracting duct.Sponsored by the United States Army under Contract No. DAAG29-80-C-0041. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. MCS 7802202 and by the Sloan Foundation     

Generation and stability of zonal flows in ion-temperature-gradient mode turbulence

We address the mechanisms underlying zonal flow generation and stability in turbulent systems driven by the electrostatic ion-temperature-gradient (ITG) mode. In the case of zonal flow stability, we show the poloidal flows typical of numerical simulations become unstable when they exceed a critical level. Near marginal stability of the linear ITG mode, the system can generate zonal flows that are sufficiently weak to remain stable and sufficiently strong to suppress the linear ITG mode. This stable region corresponds to the parameter regime of the nonlinear Dimits up-shift.     

Some considerations on the nonlinear stability of stationary planar Euler flows

We give sufficient conditions for the nonlinear stability of possibly nonsmooth stationary solutions of the two-dimensional Euler equation in symmetric bounded domains. We use, as Lyapunov functions, first integrals due to the symmetry of the problem. Moreover, we investigate the stability of smooth solutions under perturbations of the boundary. The last result is based on a generalization of the well known Arnold approach.Research partially supported by Italian CNR and Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione     

Plasma heating by discontinuous MHD flows in the vicinity of a magnetic reconnection region

An expression that explicitly describes variations in the internal energy of the plasma that flows through a discontinuity is derived based on the complete system of boundary conditions for the MHD equations on the discontinuity surface. The dependence of the plasma heating on the magnetic field density and configuration in the vicinity of the discontinuity surface (i.e., on the MHD flow type) is studied. The conditions of plasma heating at discontinuities in a self-consistent analytical model of magnetic reconnection are discussed.