An experimental and theoretical investigation has been carried out to determine the effect of a stable ambient thermal stratification on the developing buoyancyinduced flow adjacent to a flat vertical surface dissipating a uniform heat flux. The nature of the resulting base flow and its instability characteristics, linearized for two-dimensional disturbances, were analysed for Prandtl numbers Pr of 6·7 and 0·733, for several levels of ambient stratification. Stratification was found to cause initial stabilization of the flow but later destabilization downstream. Disturbance growth rates, frequency filtering and amplitude distributions across the boundary region were calculated. These aspects of the disturbance field were measured in a flow generated by an electrically heated metal foil, with artificially introduced two-dimensional disturbances, in water (Pr = 6–7). The experimental results are in very good agreement with the calculations. Measurements of natural transition indicate that a stable ambient stratification delays the onset of transition. A tentative transition-correlating parameter is generalized to include the effect of stratification.

The steady, uniform, horizontal flow of a vertically stratified, non-diffusive fluid over a sphere is considered. A correction to the Stokes drag formula is obtained which is valid for small values of a stratification parameter α, Re [Lt ] |α| 1/3 and Fr2 [Lt ] |α|−1/3. To the order of the calculations, the sphere has no tendency to rotate, nor does it experience a lift force.

The theory initiated by Lighthill (1952) to describe the sound radiated by turbulence embedded in an uniform fluid at rest is here extended to the case where the turbulence exists on the edge of a uniformly moving stream. An exact analogy is developed between the distant real sound field and that which would be radiated by a particular quadrupole distribution adjacent to a vortex sheet positioned in the linearly disturbed flow. The equivalent sources in this analogy are quadrupoles identical in strength with those in Lighthill's model, but the quadrupoles are now shown to convect with the fluid-particle velocity. There is no amplifying effect of shear. The particular case of a plane shear layer is worked out in detail for sound waves of scale large in comparison with the shear-layer thickness.

A downstream zone of silence is predicted as is the formation of highly directional beams associated with the interference of sound radiated directly and sound reflected from the fluid interface. A distinct structure results in which the variation of sound with flow velocity, density and angle is not easily accounted for by simple power-law scaling. Finally a comparison is made with some features of jet noise; the modelling of the high frequency jet noise problem by a single shear layer yields some features consistent with experiment.

The application of slender-body theory to the evaluation of the three-dimensional surface velocities induced by a boundary layer on an elliptic cylinder is considered. The method is applicable when the Reynolds number is sufficiently large so that the thin-boundary-layer approximation is valid. The resulting potential problem is reduced to a two-dimensional consideration of the flow over an expanding cylinder with porous boundary conditions. The limiting solutions for a flat plate of finite span and a nearly circular cross-section are obtained in a simple analytic form. In the former case, within the limitations of slender-body theory, the results are in exact agreement with the complete three-dimensional solution for this geometry.

The objective of this paper is to describe approximately the coupled steady-state processes of light propagation and induced laminar incompressible fluid flow in the case of natural convection.

For the case of a homogeneous fluid and under the assumptions that light energy is instantaneously transformed into heat and that the induced velocities are not too large, it is reasonable to use the boundary-layer equations to describe the induced natural flow. These equations are augmented by the conservation of energy equation. The velocity, temperature and intensity functions are expected to exhibit similarity properties.

A high-intensity light beam with a given rotationally symmetric Gaussian initial intensity distribution is propagating vertically upwards into a fluid initially at rest. The fluid characteristics are assumed to be constant. A stream function is introduced to satisfy the conservation of mass equation. The conservation of momentum equation leads to conditions on the unknown functions involved in the stream function. Additional conditions follow from the conservation of energy equation, which involves the local light intensity as a driving term.

Under the assumptions made, self-defocusing (thermal blooming) will occur. The main results are an exponential increase of the boundary-layer thickness and an exponential decrease of temperature and of light intensity due to the blooming effect in addition to the exponential decrease due to absorption.

Isothermal Newtonian film flow is put forward as a simple model of the film casting process. Methods of linear hydrodynamic stability theory are applied to study the stability of the film flow. The relevant eigenvalue problems are formulated and solved numerically. Results are presented in the form of neutral-stability curves in the appropriate parameter space. For the case of two-dimensional disturbances stability results obtained here are compared with those of Pearson & Matovich (1969) and Gelder (1971) for the stability of isothermal Newtonian threadline flow.

The frictional torque on a dumbbell rotating with time-dependent angular velocity is calculated from the hydrodynamic interaction between the two ends of the dumbbell. This leads to the correlation function for the random torque in rotatory Brownian motion. Although the motion of each dumbbell end has the characteristics of a translational motion, the correlation function at large times decays like t−5/2, as in the case of a solid sphere. The correlation function may be calculated for the limiting case of very small angular displacements. The results for displacements of arbitrary magnitude are the same provided that terms quadratic in the angular velocity are negligible.

The near wall jet produced by directing a uniform axisymmetric jet of air normally onto a large flat plate has been investigated experimentally and theoretically for four jets in the Mach number range 1·64–2·77. Detailed measurements of the surface pressure and shadowgraph and surface flow pictures are presented. The results show that the mechanism which mainly determines the supersonic near wall jet is the jet-edge expansion and its reflexions from the sonic line and the wall-jet boundaries. The near wall jet is found to consist of an alternating series of expansion and recompression regions whose strengths depend on the jet Mach number and decay with distance. At Mach numbers of 2·4 and above, shock waves are observed in the first recompression region and at a Mach number of 2·77 the boundary layer separates locally. Further out, viscous effects become increasingly important and a constant-pressure shear flow is established at a distance which increases with jet Mach number. The application of the method of characteristics in an approximate manner reproduces a number of the features of the near wall jet which are observed experimentally.

Pressure distributions obtained in the shock layer show that a stagnation bubble can occur and that its occurrence depends on factors such as the flow upstream of the nozzle. The wall-jet region is found to be largely independent of whether or not a bubble occurs in the shock layer.

This paper studies flagellar undulations that propel a micro-organism at a given speed while minimizing its expenditure of hydrodynamical energy. The study is in two basic parts. The first part is a qualitative inquiry into the general nature of undulations that are hydrodynamically optimal in the instantaneous sense. The results indicate that an apparent sliding of the entire flagellum along its instantaneous axis is fundamental to such motions, although an additional deformation is necessary to compensate for the presence of the organism's head. Periodic or semi-periodic undulations are clearly suggested, and must consist of travelling waves propagated in the direction opposite to propulsion.

The second part of the paper is a quantitative inquiry as to the values of parameters that optimize given periodic wave shapes in the time-average sense. The trade-off between wave amplitude and the number of wavelengths is of particular interest. Results are obtained for small amplitude sinusoidal waves and finite amplitude sawtooth waves. For the latter, a single wavelength with amplitude roughly one-sixth of the wavelength is optimal. The significance of the twitching movements of the head is investigated. The results are consistent with the qualitative study and emphasize the need to inhibit such motions. The implications of the dependence of resistive-force coefficients upon wave shape are considered, and the physical significance of rotational pitching motions is assessed.

A cryogenic shock tube has been developed as a tool for research in fluid mechanics and low-temperature physics. The shock tube was designed to operate with the test section immersed in a cryogenic liquid. A unique diaphragm-changing mechanism makes this shock tube an economical and practical device. There are several advantages in operating a shock tube at cryogenic temperatures. Shock waves of very large Mach number can be produced. The flow field can be accurately calculated using ideal-shock-tube/perfect-gas theory. Boundary-layer effects are decreased, so that long test times are possible.

The cases that were studied are test-gas temperatures of 300, 77, 4·2 and 2·3 °K. Helium was used as both test and driver gas. The largest Mach numbers observed range from 2·4 at 300 °K to 32 at 2·3 °K (several runs at 1·46 °K produced Mach 40 shocks). As the temperature of the test gas was decreased, the observed Mach numbers approached those calculated using the ‘shock-tube equation’.

As a laboratory tool, the cryogenic shock tube may be applied in many areas and modified for use in even more. Shock waves with large Mach numbers and flows with large Reynolds numbers can be produced with this device. The rapid increase in temperature and pressure across the shock wave is useful for studies of sublimation, evaporation or chemical reactions. Quantum-mechanical effects in cryogenic materials, superconductors or superfluid helium can also be investigated.

The objective of this paper is to show how to formulate a bifurcation theory for pipe flows in terms of the friction factor. We compute the slope of the friction factor vs. Reynolds number curve and the frequency change for the time-periodic solution which bifurcates from Poiseuille flow through annular ducts.