The Kelvin impulse is a particularly valuable dynamical concept in unsteady fluid mechanics, with Benjamin and Ellis [2] appearing to be the first to have realised its value in cavitation bubble dynamics. The Kelvin impulse corresponds to the apparent inertia of the cavitation bubble and, like the linear momentum of a projectile, may be used to determine aspect It is defined as

where ρ is the fluid density, ø is the velocity potential, S is the surface of the cavitation bubble and n is the outward normal to the fluid. Contributions to the Kelvin impulse may come from the presence of nearby boundaries and the ambient velocity and pressure field. With this number of mechanisms contributing to its development, the Kelvin impulse may change sign during the lifetime of the bubble. After collapse of the bubble, it needs to be conserved, usually in the form of a ring vortex. The Kelvin impulse is likely to provide valuable indicators as to the physical properties required of boundaries in order to reduce or eliminate cavitation damage. Comparisons are made against available experimental evidence.

The free surface due to a submerged source in a fluid of finite depth at infinite Froude number is reconsidered. A conformal transformation technique is used to formulate this problem as an integral equation for the free-surface angle. An elementary solution is found for the equation, which results in a closed form expression for the free-surface elevation. Comparison is made with previous numerical solutions.

The Dean problem of pressure-driven flow between finite-length concentric cylinders is considered. The outer cylinder is at rest and the small-gap approximation is used. In a similar procedure to that of Blennerhassett and Hall [8] in the context of Taylor vortices, special end conditions are imposed in which the ends of the cylinder move with the mean flow, allowing the use of a perturbation analysis from a known basic flow. Difficulties specific to Dean flow (and more generally to non-Taylor-vortex flow) require the use of a parameter α which measures the relative strengths of the velocities due to rotation and the pressure gradient, to trace the solution from Taylor to Dean flow. Asymptotic expansions are derived for axial wavenumbers at a given Taylor number. The calculation of critical Taylor number for a given cylinder height is then carried out. Corresponding stream-function contours clearly show features not evident in infinite flow.

Fluid motion established by an oscillatory pressure gradient superimposed on a mean, in a tube of slowly varying section, is studied when the temperature of the tube wall varies with axial distance. Particular attention is focussed on the mean flow and steady streaming components of the oscillatory flow of higher approximation. For the velocity components, the axial component takes the pride of place, since this component is responsible for convection of nutrients to various parts of the body of a mammal in systematic circulation. A salient point in the paper concerns consequences of free convection currents at a constriction (stenosis).

A mathematical model is developed for the process of gas exchange in lung capillaries, taking into account the transport mechanisms of molecular diffusion and the facilitated diffusion of the species due to haemoglobin. We have assumed here equilibrium conditions which enable us to neglect advection effects. The nth order one-step kinetics of oxygen uptake by haemoglobin, proposed by Sharan and Singh [8], have been incorporated. The solution of this coupled nonlinear facilitated diffusion-reaction problem together with the physiologically-relevant boundary conditions is obtained in the closed form.

It is found that about 97.15% of total haemoglobin has combined with oxygen and 2.85% free pigment is left, which is present as carbaminohaemoglobin, met haemoglobin, carboxy haemoglobin etc. It is also shown that the percentage of free haemoglobin at a given PO2 and PCO2 is independent of total haemoglobin content present in the blood.

The well-known Hill's empirical relation is deduced from our solution. The results obtained from our model, based on physical formulation, are in good agreement with the documented data [6] and those computed from the Kelman [3] empirical relation.

The paper asks and answers the question “When does dominance of a particular strategy play a role in the search for evolutionary stable strategies?” The answer is much less obvious than would appear at first glance.

When there is strict dominance of a pure strategy, it is clear that the dominated strategy should never be employed in any conflict. However, when the dominance is not strict it is less obvious that the strategy should not be used. The research was originally intended to clear up this grey area in the theory of evolutionary stable strategies, but it has turned out to be of more than simply academic interest. The result can be used, with varying degrees of success, to simplify the search procedure for these evolutionary stable strategies when a reward matrix is given.

In this paper we shall derive some asymptotic formulae for spectra of the third boundary value problem in Rn, n = 2 or 3, linked with variation of a positive function entering the boundary conditions. Further results may be obtained.

The homotopy method is used to find all eigenpairs of a generalised symmetric eigenvalue problem Ax = λBx with positive definite B. The determination of n eigenpairs (x, λ) is reduced to curve tracing of n disjoint smooth curves in Rn × R × [0, 1]. The method might be attractive if A and B are sparse symmetric. In this paper it is shown that the method will work for almost all symmetric tridiagonal matrices A and B.