Experimental Investigation of Influence of Interfacial Tension on Convection of Two-Layer Immiscible Liquid

Bdnard-Marangoni convections of two-layer fluids heated from the bottom are investigated experimentally with a particle imagine velocimetry. The flows are visualized from the side, and various velocity fields near the onset of convection, such as three-layer vortex convective patterns, are observed when the depth ratio varies in a wide range. A new classification of the convective patterns is proposed with more detail than in previous studies. The analysis of the results indicates that the interface tension greatly influences the motion intensities of the bottom and top layers. The dimensionless wave number increases with the Bond number when the motion in the top layer is not more intense than that in the bottom layer, which agrees with the theoretical prediction.     

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.     

Direct Numerical Simulation of Three-Dimensional Richtmyer--Meshkov Instability

Direct numerical simulation （DNS） is used to study flow characteristics after interaction of a planar shock with a spherical media interface in each side of which the density is different. This interracial instability is known as the Richtmyer-Meshkov （R-M） instability. The compressible Navier-Stoke equations are discretized with group velocity control （GVC） modified fourth order accurate compact difference scheme. Three-dimensional numerical simulations are performed for R-M instability installed passing a shock through a spherical interface. Based on numerical results the characteristics of 3D R-M instability are analysed. The evaluation for distortion of the interface, the deformation of the incident shock wave and effects of refraction, reflection and diffraction are presented. The effects of the interracial instability on produced vorticity and mixing is discussed.     

Transition to Chaos in the Floating Half Zone Convection

The transition process from steady convection to chaos is experimentally studied in thermocapillary convections of floating half zone. The onset of temperature oscillations in the liquid bridge of floating half zone and further transitions of the temporal convective behaviour are detected by measuring the temperature in the liquid bridge. The fast Fourier transform reveals the frequency and amplitude characteristics of the flow transition. The experimental results indicate the existence of a sequence of period-doubling bifurcations that culminate in chaos. The measured Feigenbaum numbers are δ2 =4.69 and δ4 = 4.6, which are comparable with the theoretical asymptotic value δ=4.669.     

Experimental Study on Liquid Free Surface in Buoyant-Thermocapillary Convection

We investigate the surface deformations of buoyant-thermocapillary convection in a rectangular cavity due to gravity and temperature gradient between the two sidewalls. The cavity is 52mm×42 mm in horizontal cross section, the thickness of liquid layer h is changed from 2.5 mm to 6.5 mm. Surface deformations of h = 3.5 mm and 6.0mm are discussed and compared. Temperature difference is increased gradually, and the flow in the liquid layer will change from stable convection to unstable convection. Two kinds of optical diagnostic system with image processor are developed for study of the kinetics of buoyant-thermocapillary convection, they give out the information of liquid free surface. The quantitative results are calculated by Fourier transform and correlation analysis, respectively. With the increasing temperature gradient, surface deformations calculated are more declining. It is interesting phenomenon that the inclining directions of the convections in thin and thick liquid layers are different. For a thin layer, the convection is mainly controlled by thermocapillary effect. However, for a thick layer, the convection is mainly controlled by buoyancy effect. The surface deformation theoretically analysed is consistent with our experimental results. The present experiment proves that surface deformation is related to temperature gradient and thickness of the liquid layer. In other words, surface deformation lies on capillary convection and buoyancy convection.     

A parallel computer implementation of the Asymptotic Numerical Method to study thermal convection instabilities

We have developed a numerical model to efficiently compute steady-state combined buoyancy and thermocapillary convection solutions. It features a parallel computer implementation of an Asymptotic Numerical Method to perform steady-state path-following and locate bifurcation points in problems involving large size algebraic systems, up to few million degrees of freedom. The model has been first validated on a problem for which a reference solution exists and then is used to analyse the influence of the container size and shape on Rayleigh–Bénard–Marangoni convection and its related cellular pattern.     

Modeling film flows down inclined planes

A new model of film flow down an inclined plane is derived by a method combining results of the classical long wavelength expansion to a weighted-residuals technique. It can be expressed as a set of three coupled evolution equations for three slowly varying fields, the thickness h, the flow-rate q, and a new variable that measures the departure of the wall shear from the shear predicted by a parabolic velocity profile. Results of a preliminary study are in good agreement with theoretical asymptotic properties close to the instability threshold, laboratory experiments beyond threshold and numerical simulations of the full Navier-Stokes equations. Received: 16 April 1998 / Revised: 29 June 1998 / Accepted: 2 July 1998     

Dynamics and stability of volume-scavenging drop arrays: Coarsening by capillarity

N drops, pinned by circular contact lines, are arranged in an array and coupled by a network of conduits. Inertialess exchange of volume among drops is driven by capillarity through the minimization of total surface energy. Drops scavenge volume from one another based on pressure differences, proportional to the surface tension, and arising from curvature differences. The system coarsens in the sense that, with time, volume is increasingly localized and ends up in a single ‘winner’ drop. Numerical simulations show that the identity of the winner can depend discontinuously on the initial condition and connectivity network. This motivates a study of the corresponding N-dimensional nonlinear dynamical system. All fixed points and their linear stabilities, obtained analytically, are found to be independent of connectivity. To determine which of the stable fixed points will be the winner, manifolds separating the attracting regions are found using a method which combines local information (eigenvectors at fixed points) with global information (invariant manifolds due to symmetry). This method is demonstrated for three N=3 systems with various connectivity networks, and is used to explain the numerical observations.     

Improved modeling of flows down inclined planes

New models of film flows down inclined planes have been derived by combining a gradient expansion at first or second order to weighted residual techniques with polynomials as test functions. The two-dimensional formulation has been extended to account for three-dimensional flows as well. The full second-order two-dimensional model can be expressed as a set of four coupled evolution equations for four slowly varying fields, the thickness h, the flow rate q and two other quantities measuring the departure from the flat-film semi-parabolic velocity profile. A simplified model has been obtained in terms of h and q only. Including viscous dispersion effects properly, it closely sticks to the asymptotic expansion in the appropriate limit. Our new models improve over previous ones in that they remain valid deep into the strongly nonlinear regime, as shown by the comparison of our results relative to travelling-wave and solitary-wave solutions with those of both direct numerical simulations and experiments. Received 14 September 1999 and Received in final form 6 January 2000     

Cryptanalysis of a discrete-time synchronous chaotic encryption system

Recently a chaotic cryptosystem based on discrete-time synchronization has been proposed. Some weaknesses of that new encryption system are addressed and exploited in order to successfully cryptanalyze the system.     

Weak Nonlinearity of Ablative Rayleigh--Taylor Instability

The weakly nonlinear regime of single mode ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability is studied, with consideration of preheat effect and the width of the ablation front. The Rayleigh-Taylor linear growth rate agrees well with the direct numerical simulation. For the density perturbation, the amplitude distribution of the fundamental mode has one peak value whereas those of the second and third harmonics have two and three peak values, respectively. Harmonics generation versus wave number is also given and it is close to the result of direct numerical simulation.     

Determination of the parameters for a Lorenz system and application to break the security of two-channel chaotic cryptosystems

This Letter describes how to determine the parameter of the chaotic Lorenz system used in a two-channel cryptosystem. First the geometrical properties of the Lorenz system are used to reduce the parameter search space. Second the parameters are exactly determined—directly from the ciphertext—through the minimization of the average jamming noise power created by the encryption process.     

Instabilities developed in stratified flows over pronounced obstacles

In the present work we study numerical and experimentally the flow of a two-layer stratified fluid over a topographic obstacle. The problem reflects a wide number of oceanographic and meteorological situations, where the stratification plays an important role. We identify the different instabilities developed by studying the pycnocline deformation due to a pronounced obstacle. The numerical simulations were made using the model caffa3D.MB which works with a numerical model of Navier-Stokes equations with finite volume elements in curvilinear meshes. The experimental results are contrasted with numerical simulations. Linear stability analysis predictions are checked with particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements.     

Relaxation on the energy method for the transient Rayleigh-Bénard convection

The onset of buoyancy-driven instability in initially quiescent fluid layers having the various boundary conditions is analyzed by using the energy method. New energy stability equation is derived under the Boussinesq approximation and the relative stability concept. The predicted critical conditions are compared with the previous results based on the conventional energy method. The stability limits which are related to the onset time of instabilities are presented as a function of the Rayleigh number Ra and the Prandtl number Pr. The present stability results predict that the onset time of convective instability decreases with increasing Ra and Pr. For the case of high Ra, the onset time of the instability is relatively insensitive to the boundary conditions of the upper boundaries.     

Linear Stability of Taylor-Couette Flows with Axial Heat Buoyancy

The linear stability is studied of flows confined between two concentric cylinders, in which the radial temperature gradient and axial gravity are considered for an incompressible Newtonian fluid. Numerical method based on the Petrov-Galerkin scheme is developed to deal with the buoyancy term in momentum equations and an additional temperature perturbation equation. Computations of the neutral stability curves are performed for different rotation cases. It is found that the flow instability is influenced by both centrifugal and axial shear instabilities, and the two instability mechanisms interact with each other. The outer cylinder rotation plays dual roles of stabilizer and destabilizer under different rotating stages with the inner cylinder at rest. For the heat buoyancyinduced axial flow, spiral structures are found in the instability modes.     

Hopf Bifurcations for the Recently Proposed Smooth-and-Discontinuous Oscillator

We investigate the Hopf bifurcations of the recently proposed smooth-and-discontinuous （SD） oscillator which exhibits both smooth and discontinuous dynamics depending on the value of a parameter a. The nonlinearity presented in this system characterizes irrationality and piecewise linearity for smooth and discontinuous cases, respectively, which could not meet the requirements of the conventional methods due to the barrier of Taylor expansion. Introducing a series of new kinds of elliptic integrals of the first and second kind to the perturbed oscillator, we obtain the Poincare-Birchoff normal forms of Hopf bifurcations for both smooth and discontinuous regimes. We also demonstrate the criteria for the occurrence of Hopf bifurcations, the stability of periodic solutions bifurcating from the equilibria and the excellent agreement between the theoretical and numerical results.     

Three-Dimensional Waves in Tilt Thermal Boundary Layers

We numerically and theoretically study the stabilities of tilt thermal boundary layers immersed in stratified air. An interesting phenomenon is revealed： the stationary longitudinal-roll mode becomes unstable to some oscillating state even when the Grashof number is smaller than its corresponding critical value. By stability analysis, this phenomenon is explained in terms of a new three-dimensional wave mode. The effect of the tilt angle on the stability of the boundary flows is investigated. Since the new three-dimensional wave is found to be the most unstable mode when the title angle is between 30° and 64°, it is expected to play an important role in the transition to turbulence.     

Compressible Rayleigh-Taylor Instability with Preheat in Inertial Confinement Fusion

The compressible Rayleigh-Taylor instability of accelerated ablation front is analysed in consideration of the preheat effects, and the corresponding eigen-problem is solved numerically using the fourth-order accurate two- point compact difference scheme. Both the growth rate and perturbation profiles are obtained, and the obtained growth rate is close to the results of direct numerical simulation. Our results show that the growth rate is more reduced and the cutoff wave length becomes longer as preheat increases.