Latest papers in fluid mechanics

Author(s): H. Perrin, D. Belardinelli, M. Sbragaglia, and B. Andreotti

How does a liquid-vapor interface in contact with a plate in motion react to the presence of defects at smaller scales? The hydrodynamics of such a system is investigated theoretically, offering a tractable mathematical framework to explore contact line motion through a disordered energy landscape.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 044001] Published Mon Apr 09, 2018

Author(s): Sumit Kumar Birwa, G. Rajalakshmi, Rama Govindarajan, and Narayanan Menon

New experiments show that collisions between a sphere and a plane immersed in a viscous fluid involve direct mechanical contact, in contrast to expectations based on earlier theory. An electrical probe is used to monitor short-time mechanics of contact formation during the rebound of the sphere.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 044302] Published Mon Apr 09, 2018

Author(s): Ankit Awasthi and William Anderson

The feedback between topographically driven turbulent secondary flows and modulation of small-scale amplitude and frequency is explored. Results demonstrate that modulation remains but differs intrinsically because of background secondary flows within the domain.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 044602] Published Mon Apr 09, 2018

Author(s): Yasufumi Horimoto, Gabriel Simonet-Davin, Atsushi Katayama, and Susumu Goto

An experimental investigation shows that the small ellipticity of a precessing spheroidal cavity has a significant impact on the flow transition from solid-body rotational flow to developed turbulence of a confined fluid. In contrast, the developed turbulence in the spheroid is almost identical to that in the sphere.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 044603] Published Mon Apr 09, 2018

Author(s): Richard J. A. M. Stevens, Alexander Blass, Xiaojue Zhu, Roberto Verzicco, and Detlef Lohse

Direct numerical simulations of highly turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection up to Rayleigh numbers Ra = 109 in horizontally periodic domains with aspect ratios up to Γ = 128, find superstructures of very large-scale and long living coherent structures.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 041501(R)] Published Fri Apr 06, 2018

Author(s): Pritish M. Kamat, Brayden W. Wagoner, Sumeet S. Thete, and Osman A. Basaran

Simulations and experiments resolve a long-standing controversy that the gradient of surface tension—Marangoni stress—rather than surface tension lowering is responsible for decelerated thinning rates and microthread cascades during breakup of surfactant-covered threads.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 043602] Published Fri Apr 06, 2018

Author(s): Antoine Delon, Alain Cartellier, and Jean-Philippe Matas

We evidence two regimes for the flapping instability of a liquid jet atomized by a gas stream: a first one where it is synchronized with an upstream shear instability, and a second one where frequency is independent of gas flow, simply controlled by the ratio of liquid velocity to liquid jet radius.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 043901] Published Fri Apr 06, 2018

Author(s): Sudarshan Konidena, Jonghoon Lee, K. Anki Reddy, and Anugrah Singh

Buoyant particle suspension in a horizontal rotating cylinder is known to exhibit axially oscillating particle bands in the centrifugal force dominant phase. Numerical simulations using Stokeslets as the particles were performed to investigate the behavior.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 044301] Published Fri Apr 06, 2018

Author(s): Antoine Campagne, Roumaissa Hassaini, Ivan Redor, Joël Sommeria, Thomas Valran, Samuel Viboud, and Nicolas Mordant

Experiments are performed in the Coriolis facility to investigate gravity surface wave turbulence. Results indicate that dissipation is responsible for the quantitative discrepancy between experimental and field measurement of the wave energy spectrum, which is systematically steeper in the lab.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 044801] Published Fri Apr 06, 2018

Author(s): Peng Wang, Lianhua Zhu, Wei Su, Lei Wu, and Yonghao Zhang

The nonlinear oscillation of rarefied gas flow inside a two-dimensional rectangular cavity is investigated on the basis of the Shakhov kinetic equation. The gas dynamics, heat transfer, and damping force are studied numerically via the discrete unified gas-kinetic scheme for a wide range of paramete...

[Phys. Rev. E 97, 043103] Published Thu Apr 05, 2018

Author(s): Neta Leibowitz, Jarrod Schiffbauer, Sinwook Park, and Gilad Yossifon

We report evidence of variation in ion selectivity of a fabricated microchannel-nanochannel device resulting in the appearance of a distinct local maximum in the overlimiting chronopotentiometric response. In this system consisting of shallow microchannels joined by a nanochannel, viscous shear at t...

[Phys. Rev. E 97, 043104] Published Thu Apr 05, 2018

Author(s): Sébastien Michelin, Etienne Guérin, and Eric Lauga

Microscopic bubble dissolution is driven by the diffusion of gas within the surrounding liquid. Asymptotic analysis is used to characterize collective shielding effects in bubble lattices, the resulting bubble lifetime and dissolution dynamics.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 043601] Published Thu Apr 05, 2018

Author(s): Marco Martins Afonso, Paolo Muratore-Ginanneschi, Sílvio M. A. Gama, and Andrea Mazzino

Inertial particles moving in a fluid flow are ubiquitous in nature. Despite their small size, they can actively influence Earth climate dynamics. A new perturbative strategy is proposed to obtain the sedimentation velocity and the effective diffusivity in the limit of neutrally buoyant particles.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 044501] Published Wed Apr 04, 2018

Author(s): Gustavo Castillo and Claudio Falcón

We report on the generation of an intermittent wave field driven by a horizontally moving wave maker interacting with Faraday waves. The spectrum of the local gravitocapillary surface wave fluctuations displays a power law in frequency for a wide range of forcing parameters. We compute the probabili...

[Phys. Rev. E 97, 043101] Published Tue Apr 03, 2018

Author(s): Raksha Mahalinkam, Felicity Gong, and Aditya S. Khair

The inertial locomotion of an elongated model swimmer in a Newtonian fluid is quantified, wherein self-propulsion is achieved via steady tangential surface treadmilling. The swimmer has a length 2l and a circular cross section of longitudinal profile aR(z), where a is the characteristic width of the...

[Phys. Rev. E 97, 043102] Published Tue Apr 03, 2018

Author(s): Srikanth Toppaladoddi and John S. Wettlaufer

Penetrative convection is essential in controlling the dynamics of many geophysical and astrophysical systems. Here, we explore how a nonlinear vertical density profile influences the penetrative convection into a stable stratification.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 043501] Published Tue Apr 03, 2018

Author(s): Jongmin Seo and Ali Mani

Drag reduction and interfacial robustness of turbulent flows over superhydrophobic surfaces with randomly distributed textures are investigated using direct numerical simulations. Slip length, pressure fluctuations, and interface deformations are analyzed and compared against aligned textures.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 044601] Published Mon Apr 02, 2018

Author(s): M. Garzon, L. J. Gray, and J. A. Sethian

The coalescence, and subsequent satellite formation, of two inviscid droplets is studied numerically. The initial drops are taken to be of equal and different sizes, and simulations have been carried out with and without the presence of an electrical field. The main computational challenge is the tr...

[Phys. Rev. E 97, 033112] Published Fri Mar 30, 2018

Author(s): Benoit Vincenti, Carine Douarche, and Eric Clement

We develop a model of elliptical micro-swimmers with a magnetic dipole under shear flow in a dilute suspension subject to a constant magnetic field. We find at finite shear rates transitions to either a motor state in which energy can be extracted or a brake state with high resistance to shear.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 033302] Published Fri Mar 30, 2018

Author(s): Dong Song, Baowei Song, Haibao Hu, Xiaosong Du, Peng Du, Chang-Hwan Choi, and Jonathan P. Rothstein

The presence of a surface tension gradient is demonstrated at the air-water interface supported above a millimeter-sized discontinuous groove. It reduces the slip velocity and in some cases results in an interfacial velocity that is opposite to the main flow direction.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 033303] Published Fri Mar 30, 2018