We investigate the flow around an oscillating nearly spherical particle at low, yet non-vanishing, Reynolds numbers ($Re$), and the potential resulting locomotion. We analytically demonstrate that no net motion can arise up to order one in $Re$ and order one in the asphericity parameter, regardless of the particle’s shape. Therefore, geometry-induced acoustic streaming propulsion, if any, must arise at higher order.

We investigate the stability of the Prandtl model for katabatic slope flows using both linear stability theory and direct numerical simulations. Starting from Prandtl’s analytical solution for uniformly cooled laminar slope flows, we use linear stability theory to identify the onset of instability and features of the most unstable modes. Our results show that the Prandtl model for parallel katabatic slope flows is prone to transverse and longitudinal modes of instability. The transverse mode of instability manifests itself as stationary vortical flow structures aligned in the along-slope direction, whereas the longitudinal mode of instability emerges as waves propagating in the base-flow direction. Beyond the stability limits, these two modes of instability coexist and form a complex flow structure crisscrossing the plane of flow. The emergence of a particular form of these instabilities depends strongly on three dimensionless parameters, which are the slope angle, the Prandtl number and a newly introduced stratification perturbation parameter, which is proportional to the relative importance of the disturbance to the background stratification due to the imposed surface buoyancy flux. We demonstrate that when this parameter is sufficiently large, then the stabilising effect of the background stratification can be overcome. For shallow slopes, the transverse mode of instability emerges despite meeting the Miles–Howard stability criterion of $Ri>0.25$. At steep slope angles, slope flow can remain linearly stable despite attaining Richardson numbers as low as $3\times 10^{-3}$.

This paper quantifies the instantaneous form of large-scale turbulent structures in canonical smooth-wall boundary layers, demonstrating that they adhere to a form that is consistent with the self-sustaining streak instability model suggested by Flores & Jiménez (Phys. Fluids, vol. 22, 2010, 071704) and Hwang & Cossu (Phys. Fluids, vol. 23, 2011, 061702). Our motivation for this study stems from previous observations of large-scale streaks that have been spatially locked in position within spanwise-heterogeneous boundary layers. Here, using similar tools, we demonstrate that the randomly occurring large-scale structures in canonical layers show similar behaviour. Statistically, we show that the signature of large-scale coherent structures exhibits increasing meandering behaviour with distance from the wall. At the upper edge of the boundary layer, where these structures are severely misaligned from the main-flow direction, the induced velocities associated with the strongly yawed vortex packets/clusters yield a significant spanwise-velocity component leading to an apparent oblique coherence of spanwise-velocity fluctuations. This pronounced meandering behaviour also gives rise to a dominant streamwise periodicity at a wavelength of approximately $6\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}$. We further statistically show that the quasi-streamwise roll-modes formed adjacent to these very large wavy motions are often one-sided (spanwise asymmetric), in stark contrast to the counter-rotating form suggested by conventional conditionally averaged representations. To summarise, we sketch a representative picture of the typical large-scale structures based on the evidence gathered in this study.

Horizontal density layers are commonly observed in stratified turbulence. Recent work (e.g. Taylor & Zhou, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 823, 2017, R5) has reinvigorated interest in the Phillips instability (PI), by which density layers form via negative diffusion if the turbulent buoyancy flux weakens as stratification increases. Theoretical understanding of PI is incomplete, in part because it remains unclear whether and by what mechanism the flux-gradient relationship for a given example of turbulence has the required negative-diffusion property. Furthermore, the difficulty of analysing the flux-gradient relation in evolving turbulence obscures the operating mechanism when layering is observed. These considerations motivate the search for an example of PI that can be analysed clearly. Here PI is shown to occur in two-dimensional Boussinesq sheared stratified turbulence maintained by stochastic excitation. PI is analysed using the second-order S3T closure of statistical state dynamics, in which the dynamics is written directly for statistical variables of the turbulence. The predictions of S3T are verified using nonlinear simulations. This analysis provides theoretical underpinning of PI based on the fundamental equations of motion that complements previous analyses based on phenomenological models of turbulence.

Viscoelastic flow past a cylinder is a classic benchmark problem that is not completely understood. Using novel three-dimensional (3D) holographic particle velocimetry, we report three main discoveries of the elastic instability upstream of a single cylinder in viscoelastic channel flow. First, we observe that upstream vortices initiate at the corner between the cylinder and the wall, and grow with increasing flow rate. Second, beyond a critical Weissenberg number, the flow upstream becomes unsteady and switches between two bistable configurations, leading to symmetry breaking in the cylinder axis direction that is highly 3D in nature. Lastly, we find that the disturbance of the elastic instability propagates relatively far upstream via an elastic wave, and is weakly correlated with that in the cylinder wake. The wave speed and the extent of the instability increase with Weissenberg number, indicating an absolute instability in viscoelastic fluids.

The possibility of subcritical behaviour in the geostrophic turbulence regime of rapidly rotating thermally driven convection is explored. In this regime a non-local inverse energy transfer may compete with the more traditional and local direct cascade. We show that, even for control parameters for which no inverse cascade has previously been observed, a subcritical transition towards a large-scale vortex state can occur when the system is initialized with a vortex dipole of finite amplitude. This new example of bistability in a turbulent flow, which may not be specific to rotating convection, opens up new avenues for studying energy transfer in strongly anisotropic three-dimensional flows such as atmospheric or oceanic circulations.

Numerical simulations of the surface quasigeostrophic patch indicate the development of a scale-invariant singularity of the boundary curvature in finite time, with some evidence of universality across a variety of initial conditions. At the time of singularity, boundary segments are shown to possess an exact and simple analytic form, described by branches of a logarithmic spiral centred on the point of singularity. The angles between the branches depend non-trivially on the shape of the smooth connecting boundary as the singularity is approached, but are independent of the global boundary.

In rough-wall boundary layers, wall-parallel non-homogeneous mean-flow solutions exist that lead to so-called dispersive velocity components and dispersive stresses. They play a significant role in the mean-flow momentum balance near the wall, but typically disappear in the outer layer. A theoretical framework is presented to study the decay of dispersive motions in the outer layer. To this end, the problem is formulated in Fourier space, and a set of governing ordinary differential equations per mode in wavenumber space is derived by linearizing the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations around a constant background velocity. With further simplifications, analytically tractable solutions are found consisting of linear combinations of $\exp (-kz)$ and $\exp (-Kz)$, with $z$ the wall distance, $k$ the magnitude of the horizontal wavevector $\boldsymbol{k}$, and where $K(\boldsymbol{k},Re)$ is a function of $\boldsymbol{k}$ and the Reynolds number $Re$. Moreover, for $k\rightarrow \infty$ or $k_{1}\rightarrow 0$ (with $k_{1}$ the stream-wise wavenumber), $K\rightarrow k$ is found, in which case solutions consist of a linear combination of $\exp (-kz)$ and $z\exp (-kz)$, and are independent of the Reynolds number. These analytical relations are compared in the limit of $k_{1}=0$ to the rough boundary layer experiments by Vanderwel & Ganapathisubramani (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 774, 2015, R2) and are in reasonable agreement for $\ell _{k}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\leqslant 0.5$, with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}$ the boundary-layer thickness and $\ell _{k}=2\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}/k$.

We propose a physically sound explanation for the drag reduction mechanism in a lubricated channel, a flow configuration in which an interface separates a thin layer of less-viscous fluid (viscosity $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{1}$) from a main layer of a more-viscous fluid (viscosity $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{2}$). To single out the effect of surface tension, we focus initially on two fluids having the same density and the same viscosity ($\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{1}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{2}=1$), and we lower the viscosity of the lubricating layer down to $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{1}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{2}=0.25$, which corresponds to a physically realizable experimental set-up consisting of light oil and water. A database comprising original direct numerical simulations of two-phase flow channel turbulence is used to study the physical mechanisms driving drag reduction, which we report between 20 and 30 percent. The maximum drag reduction occurs when the two fluids have the same viscosity ($\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}=1$), and corresponds to the relaminarization of the lubricating layer. Decreasing the viscosity of the lubricating layer ($\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}<1$) induces a marginally decreased drag reduction, but also helps sustaining strong turbulence in the lubricating layer. This led us to infer two different mechanisms for the two drag-reduced systems, each of which is ultimately controlled by the outcome of the competition between viscous, inertial and surface tension forces.

When a torus oscillates horizontally in a linearly stratified fluid, the wave rays form a double cone, one upward and one downward, with two focal points where the wave amplitude has a maximum due to wave focusing. Following a former study on linear aspects of wave focusing (Ermanyuk et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 813, 2017, pp. 695–715), we here consider experimental results on the nonlinear aspects that occur in the focal region below the torus for higher-amplitude forcing. A new non-dimensional number that is based on heuristic arguments for the wave amplitude in the focal area is presented. This focusing number is defined as $Fo=(A/a)\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}^{-1/2}f(\unicode[STIX]{x1D703})$, with oscillation amplitude $A$, $f(\unicode[STIX]{x1D703})$ a function for the variation of the wave amplitude with wave angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$, and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}^{1/2}=\sqrt{b/a}$ the increase in amplitude due to the focusing, with $a$ and $b$, respectively, the minor and major radius of the torus. Nonlinear effects occur for $Fo\geqslant 0.1$, with the shear stress giving rise to a mean flow which results in the focal region in a central upward motion partially surrounded by a downward motion. With increasing $Fo$, the Richardson number $Ri$ measured from the wave steepness monotonically decreases. Wave breaking occurs at $Fo\approx 0.23$, corresponding to $Ri=0.25$. In this regime, the focal region is unstable due to triadic wave resonance. For the different tori sizes under consideration, the triadic resonant instability in these three-dimensional flows resembles closely the resonance observed by Bourget et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 723, 2013, pp. 1–20) for a two-dimensional flow, with only minor differences. Application to internal tidal waves in the ocean are discussed.

The onset of transient turbulence in minimal plane Couette flow has been identified theoretically as homoclinic tangency with respect to a simple edge state for the Navier–Stokes equation, i.e., the gentle periodic orbit (the lower branch of a saddle-node pair) found by Kawahara & Kida (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 449, 2001, pp. 291–300). The first tangency of a pair of distinct homoclinic orbits to this periodic edge state has been discovered at Reynolds number $Re\equiv Uh/\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}=Re_{T}\approx 240.88$ ($U$, $h$, and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ being half the difference of the two wall velocities, half the wall separation, and the kinematic viscosity of fluid, respectively). At $Re>Re_{T}$ a Smale horseshoe appears on the Poincaré section through transversal homoclinic points to generate a transient chaos that eventually relaminarises. In numerical experiments a sustaining chaos, which is a consequence of period-doubling cascade stemming from the upper branch of another saddle-node pair of periodic orbits, is observed in a narrow range of the Reynolds number, $Re\approx 240.40$–240.46. At the upper edge of this $Re$ range it is found that the chaotic set touches the lower branch of this pair, i.e., another edge state. The corresponding chaotic attractor is replaced by a chaotic saddle at $Re\approx 240.46$, and subsequently this saddle touches the gentle periodic edge state on the boundary of the laminar basin at the tangency Reynolds number $Re=Re_{T}$. After this crisis on the boundary of the laminar basin, for $Re>Re_{T}$, chaotic transients that eventually relaminarise can be observed.

It is well known that the water entry of a sphere causes cavity formation above a critical impact velocity as a function of the solid–liquid contact angle; Duez et al. (Nat. Phys., vol. 3 (3), 2007, pp. 180–183). Using a rough sphere with a contact angle of $120^{\circ }$, Aristoff & Bush (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 619, 2009, pp. 45–78) showed that there are four different cavity shapes dependent on the Bond and Weber numbers (i.e., quasistatic, shallow, deep and surface). We experimentally alter the Bond number, Weber number and contact angle of smooth spheres and find two key additions to the literature: (1) cavity shape also depends on the contact angle; (2) the absence of a splash crown at low Weber number results in cavity formation below the predicted critical velocity. In addition, we use alternate scales in defining the Bond, Weber and Froude numbers to predict the cavity shapes and scale pinch-off times for various impacting bodies (e.g., spheres, multidroplet streams and jets) on the same plots, merging the often separated studies of solid–liquid and liquid–liquid impact in the literature.

The classical Prandtl–Batchelor theorem (Prandtl, Proc. Intl Mathematical Congress, Heidelberg, 1904, pp. 484–491; Batchelor, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 1 (02), 1956, pp. 177–190) states that in the regions of steady 2D flow where viscous forces are small and streamlines are closed, the vorticity is constant. In this paper, we extend this theorem to recirculating flows with quasiperiodic time dependence using ergodic and geometric analysis of Lagrangian dynamics. In particular, we show that 2D quasiperiodic viscous flows, in the limit of zero viscosity, cannot converge to recirculating inviscid flows with non-uniform vorticity distribution. A corollary of this result is that if the vorticity contours form a family of closed curves in a quasiperiodic viscous flow, then at the limit of zero viscosity, vorticity is constant in the area enclosed by those curves at all times.

The theoretical framework developed by Rayleigh and Plateau in the 19th century has been remarkably accurate in describing macroscale experiments of liquid cylinder instability. Here we re-evaluate and revise the Rayleigh–Plateau instability for the nanoscale, where molecular dynamics experiments demonstrate its inadequacy. A new framework based on the stochastic lubrication equation is developed that captures nanoscale flow features and highlights the critical role of thermal fluctuations at small scales. Remarkably, the model indicates that classically stable (i.e. ‘fat’) liquid cylinders can be broken at the nanoscale, and this is confirmed by molecular dynamics.

Current global ocean models rely on ad hoc parameterizations of diapycnal mixing, in which the efficiency of mixing is globally assumed to be fixed at 20 %, despite increasing evidence that this assumption is questionable. As an ansatz for small-scale ocean turbulence, we may focus on stratified shear flows susceptible to either Kelvin–Helmholtz (KHI) or Holmboe wave (HWI) instability. Recently, an unprecedented volume of data has been generated through direct numerical simulation (DNS) of these flows. In this paper, we describe the application of deep learning methods to the discovery of a generic parameterization of diapycnal mixing using the available DNS dataset. We furthermore demonstrate that the proposed model is far more universal compared to recently published parameterizations. We show that a neural network appropriately trained on KHI- and HWI-induced turbulence is capable of predicting mixing efficiency associated with unseen regions of the parameter space well beyond the range of the training data. Strikingly, the high-level patterns learned based on the KHI and weakly stratified HWI are ‘transferable’ to predict HWI-induced mixing efficiency under much more strongly stratified conditions, suggesting that through the application of appropriate networks, significant universal abstractions of density-stratified turbulent mixing have been recognized.

We report on the transition between two regimes of heat transport in a radiatively driven convection experiment, where a fluid gets heated up within a tunable heating length $\ell$ in the vicinity of the bottom of the tank. The first regime is similar to that observed in standard Rayleigh–Bénard experiments, the Nusselt number $Nu$ being related to the Rayleigh number $Ra$ through the power law $Nu\sim Ra^{1/3}$. The second regime corresponds to the ‘ultimate’ or mixing-length scaling regime of thermal convection, where $Nu$ varies as the square root of $Ra$. Evidence for these two scaling regimes has been reported in Lepot et al. (Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, vol. 115, 2018, pp. 8937–8941), and we now study in detail how the system transitions from one to the other. We propose a simple model describing radiatively driven convection in the mixing-length regime. It leads to the scaling relation $Nu\sim (\ell /H)Pr^{1/2}Ra^{1/2}$, where $H$ is the height of the cell and $Pr$ is the Prandtl number, thereby allowing us to deduce the values of $Ra$ and $Nu$ at which the system transitions from one regime to the other. These predictions are confirmed by the experimental data gathered at various $Ra$ and $\ell$. We conclude by showing that boundary layer corrections can persistently modify the Prandtl number dependence of $Nu$ at large $Ra$, for $Pr\gtrsim 1$.

We present new experimental data on the controls on the buoyancy flux in a stratified turbulent flow. The inner cylinder of an annulus of fluid with vertical axis is rotated to produce a turbulent flow field with Reynolds numbers of up to $10^{5}$, while a flux of saline fluid is supplied to the base of the tank, and an equal flux of fresh fluid is supplied to the top of the tank. In addition, fluid is vented from the base and the top of the tank with the same volume fluxes as the supply. The steady-state vertical flux of salt is explored. When the salt flux supplied to the base of the tank is very small, the tank becomes nearly well-mixed, and the vertical salt flux is approximately equal to one-half the source flux. As the source salt flux increases, a weak stable salinity gradient develops across the tank, and the vertical salt flux increases. As the source flux continues to increase, eventually the vertical salt flux reaches a maximum, and further increases in the source salt flux can lead to an increase in the vertical salinity gradient but not the vertical flux. We interpret the transition in the vertical buoyancy flux as representing a change from a source-limited regime, where the buoyancy flux and buoyancy frequency, $N$, are related, to a mixing-limited regime, in which the buoyancy flux is independent of $N$. In the mixing-limited regime, the effective eddy diffusivity is proportional to $u_{rms}^{3}/LN^{2}$ while in the source-limited regime, the eddy diffusivity is approximately proportional to $u_{rms}^{2}/N$, where $u_{rms}$ and $L$ are the characteristic turbulence speed and length scale. This transition may have implications for the balance between upwelling and diapycnal mixing in the ocean, if the intensity of the turbulence varies in space or the flux of deep water varies in time.

We present a simple hydrodynamical model for the high-speed impact of slender bodies into frictional geomaterials such as soils and clays. We model these materials as non-smooth, complex fluids. Our model predicts the evolution of the impactor’s speed and the final penetration depth given the initial impact speed, and the material and geometric parameters of the impactor and the impacted material. As an application, we investigate the impact of deep-penetrating anchors into seabeds. Our theoretical predictions are found to match field and laboratory data very well.

Exact solutions for multipolar azimuthal-mode vortices in two-dimensional Euler flows are presented. Flow solutions with non-vanishing far-field velocity are provided for any set of azimuthal wavenumbers $m$ and arbitrary number $n$ of vorticity shells. For azimuthal wavenumbers $m=0$ and $m=1$, the far-field velocity is a rigid motion and unsteady flow solutions with vanishing far-field velocity are obtained by means of a time-dependent change of reference frame. Addition of these first two modes, in the case of $n=1$, results in a particular Chaplygin–Lamb (C–L) dipole, with continuous and vanishing vorticity at the vortex boundary. Numerical simulations suggest that this particular C–L dipole is stable.

Transitional turbulence in shear flows is supported by a network of unstable exact invariant solutions of the Navier–Stokes equations. The network is interconnected by heteroclinic connections along which the turbulent trajectories evolve between invariant solutions. While many invariant solutions in the form of equilibria, travelling waves and periodic orbits have been identified, computing heteroclinic connections remains a challenge. We propose a variational method for computing orbits dynamically connecting small neighbourhoods around equilibrium solutions. Using local information on the dynamics linearized around these equilibria, we demonstrate that we can choose neighbourhoods such that the connecting orbits shadow heteroclinic connections. The proposed method allows one to approximate heteroclinic connections originating from states with multi-dimensional unstable manifold and thereby provides access to heteroclinic connections that cannot easily be identified using alternative shooting methods. For plane Couette flow, we demonstrate the method by recomputing three known connections and identifying six additional previously unknown orbits.