We investigate the effect of intergranular cohesive forces on the properties of self-diffusion in dense granular flows. The study is based on a series of simulated plane shear flows at different inertial and cohesion numbers, in which transverse diffusivities are measured. Results evidence an increase in diffusivity by up to two orders of magnitude when introducing cohesion. This strong effect is analysed using the Green–Kubo framework, expressing the diffusivity in terms of instantaneous grain velocity fluctuations and their time correlation. This analysis shows that cohesion, by forming enduring clusters in the flow, enhances the velocity fluctuations and their time persistence, which both contribute to enhancing grain mixing and self-diffusion.

A discrepancy between the enhancement in overall burning rate and the enhancement in flame surface area measured for high-intensity turbulence is addressed. In order to reconcile the two quantities, an additional contribution from the effective turbulent diffusivity is considered. This contribution is expected to arise in sufficiently intense turbulence from eddies smaller than the flamelet thickness. In the present work, the enhancement in diffusivity arising from these eddies is estimated based on a model energy spectrum; individual contributions from all turbulence length scales smaller the flamelet thickness are integrated over the corresponding portion of the spectrum. It is shown that diffusivity enhancement, estimated in this manner, is able to account for the measured discrepancy between the overall burning rate enhancement and flame surface area enhancement. The factor quantifying this discrepancy is formalized as a closed-form function of the Karlovitz number.

When a confined bubble translates steadily in a cylindrical capillary tube, without the consideration of gravity effects, a uniform thin film of liquid separates the bubble surface and the tube wall. In this work, we investigate how this steady state is established by considering the transitional motion of the bubble as it adjusts its film thickness profile between two steady states, characterized by two different bubble speeds. During the transition, two uniform film regions coexist, separated by a step-like transitional region. The transitional motion also requires modification of the film solution near the rear of the bubble, which depends on the ratio of the two capillary numbers. These theoretical results are verified by experiments and numerical simulations.

Numerous efforts have been devoted to the derivation of equations describing the kinematics of finite-size spherical particles in arbitrary fluid flows. These approaches rely on asymptotic arguments to obtain a description of the particle motion in terms of a slow manifold. Here we present a novel approach that results in kinematic models with unprecedented accuracy compared with traditional methods. We apply a recently developed machine learning framework that relies on (i) an imperfect model, obtained through analytical arguments, and (ii) a long short-term memory recurrent neural network. The latter learns the mismatch between the analytical model and the exact velocity of the finite-size particle as a function of the fluid velocity that the particle has encountered along its trajectory. We show that training the model for one flow is sufficient to generate accurate predictions for any other arbitrary flow field. In particular, using as an exact model for trajectories of spherical particles, the Maxey–Riley equation, we first train the proposed machine learning framework using trajectories from a cellular flow. We are then able to accurately reproduce the trajectories of particles having the same inertial parameters for completely different fluid flows: the von Kármán vortex street as well as a two-dimensional turbulent fluid flow. For the second example we also demonstrate that the machine learned kinematic model successfully captures the spectrum of the particle velocity, as well as the extreme event statistics. The proposed scheme paves the way for machine learning kinematic models for bubbles and aerosols using high-fidelity DNS simulations and experiments.

The dynamics of a small rigid spherical particle in an unbounded pulsating vortex is considered, keeping constant the particle Stokes number $St$ and varying the particle-to-fluid density ratio $\unicode[STIX]{x1D71A}$ and the pulsation frequency of the vortex $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}$. We show that the asymptotic dynamics of a particle of given $St$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D71A}$ can be controlled by varying $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}$, turning the vortex core either into an attractor or a repellor. The creation of non-trivial particle limit cycles characterizes the boundaries between centrifugal and centripetal regions in parameter space. The discovered phenomenon is termed oscillatory switching centrifugation and its implications for particle demixing processes, biological protocols, lab-on-a-chip devices and dynamical systems theory are discussed at the end.

We investigate the motion of a thin vortex filament in the presence of buoyancy. The asymptotic model of Moore & Saffman (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A, vol. 272, 1972, pp. 403–429) is extended to take account of buoyancy forces in the force balance on a vortex element. The motion of a buoyant vortex is given by the transverse component of force balance, while the tangential component governs the dynamics of the structure in the core. We show that the local acceleration of axial flow is generated by the external pressure gradient due to gravity. The equations are then solved for vortex rings. An analytic solution for a buoyant vortex ring at a small initial inclination is obtained and asymptotically agrees with the literature.

We study the dynamics and the statistics of dilute suspensions of gyrotactic swimmers, a model for many aquatic motile microorganisms. By means of extensive numerical simulations of the Navier–Stokes equations at different Reynolds numbers, we investigate preferential sampling and small-scale clustering as a function of the swimming (stability and speed) and shape parameters, considering in particular the limits of spherical and rod-like particles. While spherical swimmers preferentially sample local downwelling flow, for elongated swimmers we observe a transition from downwelling to upwelling regions at sufficiently high swimming speed. The spatial distribution of both spherical and elongated swimmers is found to be fractal at small scales in a wide range of swimming parameters. The direct comparison between the different shapes shows that spherical swimmers are more clusterized at small stability and speed numbers, while for large values of the parameters elongated cells concentrate more. The relevance of our results for phytoplankton swimming in the ocean is briefly discussed.

The nonlinear evolution of an interface between a perfect conducting liquid and a perfect dielectric gas subject to periodic electrostatic forcing is studied under the long-wave approximation. It is shown that inertial thin films become unstable to finite-wavelength Faraday modes at the onset, prior to the long-wave pillaring instability reported in the lubrication limit. It is further shown that the pillaring-mode instability is subcritical in nature, with the interface approaching either the top or the bottom wall, depending on the liquid–gas holdup. On the other hand, the Faraday modes exhibit subharmonic or harmonic oscillations that nonlinearly saturate to standing waves at low forcing amplitudes. Unlike the pillaring mode, wherein the interface approaches the wall, Faraday modes may exhibit saturated standing waves when the instability is subcritical. At higher forcing amplitudes, the interface may approach either wall, again depending on the liquid–gas holdup. It is also shown that a gravitationally unstable configuration of such thin films, under the long-wave approximation, cannot be stabilized by periodic electrostatic forcing, unlike mechanical Faraday forcing. In this case, it is observed that the interface exhibits oscillatory sliding behaviour, approaching the wall in an ‘earthworm-like’ motion.

Experimental evidence is provided to demonstrate that the upstream-travelling waves in two jets screeching in the A1 and A2 modes are not free-stream acoustic waves, but rather waves with support within the jet. Proper orthogonal decomposition is used to educe the coherent fluctuations associated with jet screech from a set of randomly sampled velocity fields. A streamwise Fourier transform is then used to isolate components with positive and negative phase speeds. The component with negative phase speed is shown, by comparison with a vortex-sheet model, to resemble the upstream-travelling jet wave first studied by Tam & Hu (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 201, 1989, pp. 447–483). It is further demonstrated that screech tones are only observed over the frequency range where this upstream-travelling wave is propagative.

Designing effective control for complex three-dimensional flow fields proves to be non-trivial. Often, intuitive control strategies lead to suboptimal control. To navigate the control space, we use a linear parabolized stability analysis to guide the design of a control scheme for a trailing vortex flow field aft of a NACA0012 half-wing at an angle of attack $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}=5^{\circ }$ and a chord-based Reynolds number $Re=1000$. The stability results show that the unstable mode with the smallest growth rate (fifth wake mode) provides a pathway to excite a vortex instability, whereas the principal unstable mode does not. Inspired by this finding, we perform direct numerical simulations that excite each mode with body forces matching the shape function from the stability analysis. Relative to the uncontrolled case, the controlled flows show increased attenuation of circulation and peak streamwise vorticity, with the fifth-mode-based control set-up outperforming the principal-mode-based set-up. From these results, we conclude that a rudimentary linear stability analysis can provide key insights into the underlying physics and help engineers design effective physics-based flow control strategies.

This paper studies the transition to three-dimensional flow in the wake of a cylinder immersed in a free stream, where the cylinder is externally forced to continuously rotate about its axis and to linearly oscillate in the streamwise direction. Floquet stability analysis is used to assess the stability of the nominal two-dimensional flows at a Reynolds number $Re=100$ and rotation rate $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}D/U=3$ to three-dimensional perturbations, as a function of the amplitude and frequency of the linear oscillations. Two modes of instability are found, distinguished by their spatial structure, temporal behaviour and apparent mechanism. The first mode has a shorter wavelength in the spanwise direction and appears to be linked to a centrifugal instability in the layer of fluid near the rotating body. The second mode has a longer wavelength and is linked to an instability of the vortex cores in the wake that is subharmonic, leading to a period doubling. Either mode can be stable while the other is unstable, depending primarily on the frequency of the oscillation of the cylinder. This indicates that either mode can control the transition to a three-dimensional flow. The results are compared to the fully three-dimensional simulation results of a rotating cylinder elastically mounted and free to oscillate in the streamwise direction from Bourguet & Lo Jacono (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 781, 2015, pp. 127–165), and appear to be able to explain the surprising switching of the observed spanwise wavelength in that flow as a change in the dominant mode, and therefore mechanism, of instability.

A structure capable of substantially amplifying water waves over a broad range of frequencies at selected locations is proposed. The structure consists of a small number of C-shaped cylinders in a line array, with the cylinder properties graded along the array. Using linear potential-flow theory, it is shown that the energy carried by a plane incident wave is amplified within specified cylinders for wavelengths comparable to the array length and for a range of incident directions. Transfer-matrix analysis is used to attribute the large amplifications to excitation of local Rayleigh–Bloch waves and gradual slowing down of their group velocity along the array.

We numerically study the impact of a compound drop on a hydrophobic substrate using a ternary-fluid diffuse-interface method, aiming to understand how the presence of the inner droplet affects the spreading dynamics and maximal spreading of the compound drop. First, it is interesting to see that the numerical results for an impacting pure drop agree well with the universal rescaling of maximal spreading ratio proposed by Lee et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 786, 2016, R4). Second, two flow regimes have been identified for an impacting compound drop: namely jammed spreading and joint rim formation. The maximal spreading ratio of the compound drop is found to depend on the volume fraction of the inner droplet $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$, the surface tension ratio $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}$, the Weber number and the flow regime. Moreover, we propose a universal rescaling of maximal spreading ratio for compound drops, by integrating the one for pure drops with a corrected Weber number that takes $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}$ and the flow regime into account. The predictions of the universal rescaling are in good agreement with the numerical results for impacting compound drops.

The motion of a free-moving plate atop turbulent thermal convection exhibits diverse dynamics that displays characteristics of both deterministic and chaotic motions. Early experiments performed by Zhong & Zhang (Phys. Rev. E, vol. 75 (5), 2007, 055301) found an oscillatory and a trapped state existing for a plate floating on convective fluid in a rectangular tank. They proposed a piecewise smooth physical model (ZZ model) that successfully captures this transition of states. However, their model was deterministic and therefore could not describe the stochastic behaviours. In this study, we combine the ZZ model with a novel approach that models the stochastic aspects through a variational inequality structure. With the powerful mathematical tools for stochastic variational inequalities, the properties of the Markov process and corresponding Kolmogorov equations could be studied both numerically and analytically. Moreover, this framework also allows one to compute the transition probabilities. Our present work captures the stochastic aspects of the two aforementioned boundary–fluid coupling states, predicts the stochastic behaviours and shows excellent qualitative and quantitative agreements with the experimental data.

We present three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of internal waves excited by turbulent convection in a self-consistent, Boussinesq and Cartesian model of mixed convective and stably stratified fluids. We demonstrate that in the limit of large Rayleigh number ($Ra\in [4\times 10^{7},10^{9}]$) and large stratification (Brunt–Väisälä frequencies $f_{N}\gg f_{c}$, where $f_{c}$ is the convective frequency), simulations are in good agreement with a theory that assumes waves are generated by Reynolds stresses due to eddies in the turbulent region as described in Lecoanet & Quataert (Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., vol. 430 (3), 2013, pp. 2363–2376). Specifically, we demonstrate that the wave energy flux spectrum scales like $k_{\bot }^{4}\,f^{-13/2}$ for weakly damped waves (with $k_{\bot }$ and $f$ the waves’ horizontal wavenumbers and frequencies, respectively), and that the total wave energy flux decays with $z$, the distance from the convective region, like $z^{-13/8}$.

Pairs of nested vortex rings, one with coils, are evolved numerically to compare their topological numbers to those of recent experiments reported in Scheeler et al. (Science, vol. 357, 2017, pp. 487–491). Included are the twist $Tw$, writhe $Wr$ and self-linking ${\mathcal{L}}_{S}$ numbers, plus centreline helicities ${\mathcal{H}}_{c}$. The questions are: can the experimental numbers be validated and do these numbers have roles in the dynamics of the global helicities ${\mathcal{H}}$ and enstrophies $Z$ with respect to cascades? Topological analysis of the experiments $t=0$ analytic centreline vortex trajectories validates only the writhe measurements, not their values of $Tw$ and ${\mathcal{L}}_{S}$, which obey $Tw\lesssim {\mathcal{L}}_{S}=m\gg Wr$ for $m$-coil rings. Not $Tw\ll Wr$. To suggest why the large twists do not contribute to ${\mathcal{H}}$, it is noted that the mapping of the coiled rings onto the mesh is to a first approximation a single pair of Clebsch potentials, whose self-helicity ${\mathcal{H}}_{S}\equiv 0$. Numerical rings with circulations $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$, including some single rings, show small initial helicities with ${\mathcal{H}}(0)\approx {\mathcal{H}}_{c}\sim (\text{1 to 2})Wr\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}^{2}$$\ll {\mathcal{L}}_{S}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}^{2}$. For time and velocity scales that are consistent with the experiments, as the coils evolve, their $Tw$, $Wr$, ${\mathcal{L}}_{S}$ numbers and their helicities are nearly static until reconnection. Nonetheless, $Wr$ and $Tw$ retain important complementary roles in the dynamics of the global helicity ${\mathcal{H}}$ and enstrophy $Z$, with the evolution of the torsion $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}(s)$ profile showing the beginnings of a cascade to small scales.

The question of whether significant subvolumes of a turbulent flow can be identified by automatic means, independently of a priori assumptions, is addressed using the example of two-dimensional decaying turbulence. Significance is defined as influence on the future evolution of the flow, and the problem is cast as an unsupervised machine ‘game’ in which the rules are the Navier–Stokes equations. It is shown that significance is an intermittent quantity in this particular flow, and that, in accordance with previous intuition, its most significant features are vortices, while the least significant ones are dominated by strain. Subject to cost considerations, the method should be applicable to more general turbulent flows.

A new model for the drag force on a two-dimensional flat plate of arbitrary porosity, oriented normal to the free stream, is introduced. The model is an extension of that introduced by Koo & James (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 60(3), 1973, pp. 513–538), where the performance at low porosities is improved by including a base-suction term. The additional drag due to the base suction is calculated implicitly using momentum theory, which makes the model self-contained. The model predictions exhibit convincing agreement with experimental observations over a wide range of porosities, including the solid case, as long as shedding is absent or suppressed.

High-fidelity experiments of Richtmyer–Meshkov instability on a single-mode air/$\text{SF}_{6}$ interface are carried out at weak shock conditions. The soap-film technique is extended to create single-mode gaseous interfaces which are free of small-wavelength perturbations, diffusion layers and three-dimensionality. The interfacial morphologies captured show that the instability evolution evidently involves the smallest experimental uncertainty among all existing results. The performances of the impulsive model and other nonlinear models are thoroughly examined through temporal variations of the perturbation amplitude. The individual growth of bubbles or spikes demonstrates that all nonlinear models can provide a reliable forecast of bubble development, but only the model of Zhang & Guo (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 786, 2016, pp. 47–61) can reasonably predict spike development. The distinct images of the interface morphology obtained also provide a rare opportunity to extract interface contours such that a spectral analysis of the interfacial contours can be performed, which realizes the first direct validation of the high-order nonlinear models of Zhang & Sohn (Phys. Fluids, vol. 9, 1997, pp. 1106–1124) and Vandenboomgaerde et al. (Phys. Fluids, vol. 14 (3), 2002, pp. 1111–1122) in terms of the fundamental mode and high-order harmonics. It is found that both models show a very good and almost identical accuracy in predicting the first two modes. However, the model of Zhang & Sohn (1997) becomes much more accurate in modelling the third-order harmonics due to the fewer simplifications used.

We consider the application of active flow control to modify the radial pressure distribution of a single-phase wall-normal vortex. The present flow is based on the Burgers vortex model but with a no-slip boundary condition prescribed along its symmetry plane. The wall-normal vortex serves as a model for vortices that emerge upstream of turbomachinery, such as pumps. This study characterizes the baseline vortex unsteadiness through numerical simulation and dynamic mode decomposition. The insights gained from the baseline flow are used to develop an active flow control technique with rotating zero-net-mass blowing and suction with the objective of modifying the core-pressure distribution. The effectiveness of the control strategy is demonstrated by achieving a widened vortex core with increased pressure. This change in the flow field weakens the local strength of the wall-normal vortex core, potentially inhibiting the formation of hollow-core vortices, commonly encountered in liquids.