Second law analysis of the flow of two immiscible micropolar fluids between two porous beds

This work investigates the effect of entropy generation rate within the flow of two immiscible micropolar fluids in a horizontal channel bounded by two porous beds at the bottom and top. The flow is considered in four zones. Zone IV contains the flow of viscous fluid in the large porous bed at the bottom, zone I and zone II contain the free flow of two immiscible micropolar fluids, and zone III contains the flow of viscous fluid in the thin porous bed at the top. The flow is assumed to be governed by Eringen’s micropolar fluid flow equations in the free channel. Darcy’s law and Brinkman’s model are used for flow in porous zones, namely, zone IV and zone III, respectively. The closed form expressions for entropy generation number and Bejan number are derived in dimensionless formby using the expressions of velocity, microrotation and temperature. The effect of physical parameters like a couple stress parameter and micropolarity parameter on velocity, microrotation, temperature, entropy generation number and Bejan number are investigated.     

Theoretical and experimental studies of the boundaries between two immiscible liquids in a vortex flow with a free surface

This paper discusses an analytical representation of phase boundaries in a composite vortex that result from the circular motion of a given volume of water with a given volume of a light immiscible admixture (oil) on its surface in a cylindrical container. The vortex structure consists of a vortex cavity in the center of a container and an oil body inside the vortex. Under the assumption of axial symmetry, analytical expressions were first derived describing the shape of the phase boundaries. A series of experiments was carried out and numerical calculations were compared with the experimental data. The calculated and measured phase boundary shapes were found to be satisfactorily consistent with each other. Requirements were determined regarding the experimental study of the shape of an oil body in a composite vortex and its stability depending on the governing parameters.     

Analytical and semi-analytical solutions to flows of two immiscible Maxwell fluids between moving plates

Unsteady flows of two immiscible Maxwell fluids in a rectangular channel bounded by two moving parallel plates are studied. The fluid motion is generated by a time-dependent pressure gradient and by the translational motions of the channel walls in their planes. Analytical solutions for velocity and shear stress fields have been obtained by using the Laplace transform coupled with the finite sine-Fourier transform. These analytical solutions are new in the literature and the method developed in this paper can be generalized to unsteady flows of n-layers of immiscible fluids. By using the Laplace transform and classical method for ordinary differential equations, the second form of the Laplace transforms of velocity and shear stress are determined. For the numerical Laplace inversion, two accuracy numerical algorithms, namely the Talbot algorithm and the improved Talbot algorithm are used.     

Contribution to the dynamics of a deformable interface between two immiscible electromagnetically controllable fluids

We consider the case of a deformable material interface between two immiscible moving media, both of them being magnetizable, stressing the time dependence of the metric at the interface. This introduces a nonlinear term, proportional to the mean curvature, in the surface dynamical equations of mass momentum and angular momentum. That term intervenes also in the singular magnetic and electric fields inside the interface which lead to the influence of currents and charge densities at the interface. Also, we give the expression for the entropy production and of the different thermodynamical fluxes.     

Universality in crossover function for convection in fluids with a free surface

We show that in the onset of convection in a thin fluid layer with a free surface, the passage from surface tension driven to buoyancy driven convection with changing thickness of the fluid layer follows a universal curve and can be calculated very accurately using a variational method. We have shown that the balance between surface tension traction to buoyancy force determines the crossover length scale of the fluid which is independent of viscosity or thermal diffusivity. We suggest a scenario near critical point of fluids in which this crossover can be observed.     

Numerical simulation for separation of multi-phase immiscible fluids in porous media

Based on a lattice Boltzmann method and general principles of porous flow, a numerical technique is presented for analysing the separation of multi-phase immiscible fluids in porous media. The total body force acting on fluid particles is modified by axiding relative permeability in Nithiarasu＇s expression with an axiditional surface tension term. As a test of this model, we simulate the phase separation for the case of two immiscible fluids. The numerical results show that the two coupling relative permeability coefficients K12 and K21 have the same magnitude, so the linear flux-forcing relationships satisfy Onsager reciprocity. Phase separation phenomenon is shown with the time evolution of density distribution and bears a strong similarity to the results obtained from other numerical models and the flows in sands. At the same time, the dynamical rules in this model are local, therefore it can be run on massively parallel computers with well computational efficiency.     

Hydrodynamic coupling of two brownian spheres to a planar surface

We describe direct imaging measurements of the collective and relative diffusion of two colloidal spheres near a flat plate. The bounding surface modifies the spheres' dynamics, even at separations of tens of radii. This behavior is captured by a stokeslet analysis of fluid flow driven by the spheres' and wall's no-slip boundary conditions. In particular, this analysis reveals surprising asymmetry in the normal modes for pair diffusion near a flat surface.     

Mixed element FEM level set method for numerical simulation of immiscible fluids

A new realization of a finite element level set method for simulation of immiscible fluid flows is introduced and validated on numerical benchmarks. The new method involves a mixed discretization of the dependent variables, discretizing the flow variables with non-conforming Rannacher–Turek finite elements while using a simple first order conforming discretization of the level set field. A three step segregated solution approach is employed, first a discrete projection method is used to decouple and compute the velocity and pressure separately, after which the level set field can be computed independently.The developed method is tested and validated on a static bubble test case and on a numerical rising bubble test case for which a very accurate benchmark solution has been established. The new approach is also compared against two commercial simulation codes, Ansys Fluent and Comsol Multiphysics, which shows that the developed method is a magnitude or more accurate and at the same time significantly faster than state of the art commercial codes.     

MHD flow of two immiscible visco-elastic Rivlin-Ericksen fluids through a non-conducting rectangular channel in presence of transient pressure gradient

The aim of this paper is to investigate the problem of MHD flow of two immiscible viscoelastic Rivlin-Ericksen fluids through a non-conducting rectangular channel in presence of transient pressure gradient. Appropriate to the boundary conditions of the problem the solution is derived by variable separation technique. Using this solution the interface velocity, flux, skin friction and mean velocity are derived. In absence of the magnetic field and the elastic behaviour the corresponding classical problem can be derived.     

Rayleigh-Taylor instability for immiscible fluids of arbitrary viscosities: a magnetic levitation investigation and theoretical model

A magnetic field gradient was used to draw down a low density paramagnetic fluid below a more dense fluid in a Hele-Shaw cell. On turning off the field a Rayleigh-Taylor instability was observed in situ, and the growth of the most unstable wave vector was measured versus time. A theory for the instability that permits different viscosities for two immiscible fluids was developed, and good agreement was found with the experimental results. The technique of magnetic levitation promises to broaden significantly the accessible parameter space of gravitational interfacial instability experiments.     

Hydrodynamic modes,soft modes and fluctuation spectra near the threshold of a current instability

We give a full threedimensional treatment of the stability and the fluctuations of the uniform stationary current state in a voltage-controlled current instability. We consider a model which exhibits bulk negative differential conductivity due to Bragg scattering of hot electrons. The model consists of Langevin equations for the mean momentum and the mean energy of the charged carriers, coupled to Maxwell's equations. We investigate the normal modes and the fluctuation spectra of this system, in particular the occurrence of soft modes and of critical fluctuations at the stability limit of the uniform current state. It is shown that the nature of the normal modes is strongly determined by the electromagnetic interactions between the carriers, giving rise to hydrodynamic flux modes and to dielectric relaxation modes. As the threshold field is approached, the dielectric relaxation modes soften and couple strongly to the flux modes. It is shown that as a consequence of this coupling the exponential decay of the correlation functions due to ordinary dielectric relaxation is followed at very long times by a power law decay due to the hydrodynamic modes.Work supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation     

Low-loss surface modes and lossy hybrid modes in metamaterial waveguides

We show that waveguides with a dielectric core and a lossy metamaterial cladding (metamaterial-dielectric guides) can support hybrid ordinary-surface modes previously only known for metal-dielectric waveguides. These hybrid modes are potentially useful for frequency filtering applications as sharp changes in field attenuation occur at tailorable frequencies. Our results also show that the surface modes of a metamaterial-dielectric waveguide with comparable electric and magnetic losses can be less lossy than the surface modes of an analogous metal-dielectric waveguide with electric losses alone. Through a characterization of both slab and cylindrical metamaterial-dielectric guides, we find that the surface modes of the cylindrical guides show promise as candidates for all-optical control of low-intensity pulses.     

Acoustic wave propagation simulation in a poroelastic medium saturated by two immiscible fluids using a staggered finite-difference with a time partition method

Based on the three-phase theory proposed by Santos, acoustic wave propagation in a poroelastic medium saturated by two immiscible fluids was simulated using a staggered high-order finite-difference algorithm with a time partition method, which is firstly applied to such a three-phase medium. The partition method was used to solve the stiffness problem of the differential equations in the three-phase theory. Considering the effects of capillary pressure, reference pressure and coupling drag of two fluids in pores, three compressional waves and one shear wave predicted by Santos have been correctly simulated. Influences of the parameters, porosity, permeability and gas saturation on the velocities and amplitude of three compressional waves were discussed in detail. Also, a perfectly matched layer (PML) absorbing boundary condition was firstly implemented in the three-phase equations with a staggered-grid high-order finite-difference. Comparisons between the proposed PML method and a commonly used damping method were made to validate the efficiency of the proposed boundary absorption scheme. It was shown that the PML works more efficiently than the damping method in this complex medium. Additionally, the three-phase theory is reduced to the Biot’s theory when there is only one fluid left in the pores, which is shown in Appendix. This reduction makes clear that three-phase equation systems are identical to the typical Biot’s equations if the fluid saturation for either of the two fluids in the pores approaches to zero. Supported by the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 10534040) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 10674148)     

Surface loving and surface avoiding modes

We theoretically study the propagation of sound waves in GaAs/AlAs superlattices focusing on periodic modes in the vicinity of the band gaps. Based on analytical and numerical calculations, we show that these modes are the product of a quickly oscillating function times a slowly varying envelope function. We carefully study the phase of the envelope function compared to the surface of a semi-infinite superlattice. Especially, the dephasing of the superlattice compared to its surface is a key parameter. We exhibit two kind of modes: Surface Avoiding and Surface Loving Modes whose envelope functions have their minima and respectively maxima in the vicinity of the surface. We finally consider the observability of such modes. While Surface Avoiding Modes have experimentally been observed [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 1224301 (2006)], we show that Surface Loving Modes are likely to be observable and we discuss the achievement of such experiments. The proposed approach could be easily transposed to other types of wave propagation in unidimensional semi-infinite periodic structures as photonic Bragg mirror.     

A mean-field free energy lattice Boltzmann model for multicomponent fluids

We propose a mean-field free energy approach to simulate multi- component fluids. The model has been validated in terms of the Laplace equation of capillarity and dispersion relation of interfacial waves. Simulations of a ternary system shows that the total free energy decreases and reaches a minimum after phase separation has occurred. Different drop shapes can be obtained by adjusting the interaction strengths between individual components. These results demonstrate that both macroscopic free energy and microscopic fluid-fluid interactions have been well described in our multicomponent model.     

Derivative free method for computing modes of multilayer planar waveguide

A technique to solve generalized dispersion equation of multilayer planar waveguide has been demonstrated to obtain all the expected guided modes. The solution is based on the derivative free method for computing the zeros of an analytical function in complex plane. The derivative free method extracts the roots which are very close to actual zeros of the function. Roots are further refined using the robust iteration method to achieve the desired accuracy. Application of the proposed method has been verified by solving the modes of a variety of structures including lossless structure, leaky structure, quantum well waveguide, active waveguide, ARROW waveguide and metal clad waveguide. The method is efficient and computes all modes of planar waveguide with high accuracy.     

Hydrodynamic and thermoacoustic self-oscillations at surface boiling in channels

Experimental data and computational results obtained in a number of full-scale and numerical experiments are comprehensively analyzed. Characteristic features of two types of acoustic self-oscillations that accompany subcooled boiling of liquids in tubes are revealed. It is shown that, in the case of hydrodynamic self-oscillations, the formation of vapor bubbles is initiated by a standing pressure wave in the phase of rarefaction, whereas in the case of thermoacoustic self-oscillations, the collapse of all vapor bubbles takes place in the phase of compression of the same wave. In the first case, the working medium for the conversion of thermal energy into acoustic energy is the vapor, and, in the second case, the working medium is the liquid.