New Papers in Fluid Mechanics

Author(s): Yee Li (Ellis) Fan, Utkarsh Jain, and Devaraj van der Meer

A radially symmetric sinusoidal wave structure is imprinted on an impacting circular disk to modulate the way the disk forces the free water surface. The experiments support the argument that the surface elevation around the disk edge prior to impact is an instability of the Kelvin-Helmholtz type, as the free surface resonates when the forcing wavelength on the disk is close to the most unstable wavelength predicted by theory. Besides, our wave-structured disk is also found to promote gradual inertial wetting of the impacting surface to effectively retain the entrapped air pocket (as shown in the figure), which, in turn, mitigates the peak impact force.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 9, 010501] Published Wed Jan 10, 2024

Author(s): Dipin S. Pillai and Kirti Chandra Sahu

Electrified sessile droplets on solid surfaces are ubiquitous in nature as well as in several practical applications. Although the influence of electric field on pinned sessile droplets and soap bubbles has been investigated experimentally, the theoretical understanding of the stability limit of gen…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, L013101] Published Tue Jan 09, 2024

Author(s): Paolo Valentini, Maninder S. Grover, and Nicholas J. Bisek

The accurate characterization of molecular transport properties is essential for high-fidelity simulations of reactive, hypersonic flows. The correct prediction of energy and mass diffusion in the laminar, high-temperature, multicomponent boundary layer of a hyper-velocity flow has profound implications for the accurate modeling of gas-surface interactions and thermal loads on the aeroshell. In this work, molecular transport is investigated by solely using ab initio potential energy surfaces. Our approach removes the empiricism associated with simplified molecular interactions models used in previous studies and is applicable to arbitrary gas mixtures.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 9, 013401] Published Tue Jan 09, 2024

Author(s): Xuemin Liu and Jonathan F. MacArt

We develop neural-network active flow controllers through a deep learning PDE augmentation method (DPM). In two-dimensional, incompressible, confined cylinder flow with Re = 100, we compare drag-reduction performance and optimization cost of adjoint-based controllers and deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based controllers. The DRL-based controller demands 4,229 times the model complexity of the DPM-based one. The DPM-based controller is 4.85 times more effective and 63.2 times less computationally intensive to train than the DRL-based counterpart. In laminar compressible flows, successful extrapolation of the controller to out-of-sample flows demonstrates the robustness of the learning approach.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 9, 013901] Published Tue Jan 09, 2024

Author(s): Xinglong Shang, Zhengyuan Luo, Bofeng Bai, Long He, and Guoqing Hu

Comprehensive numerical investigations of droplet displacement in soluble surfactant driven flows using the front-tracking method are presented. Surfactant transport in the bulk and at interfaces shapes droplet displacement and determines the transition conditions between steady-state sliding and detachment. Detachment is highly dependent on surfactant replenishment at interfaces, especially at receding contact lines where the nonuniform concentration induced Marangoni flow impedes movement. The critical effective capillary number can be used as a criterion to evaluate the ability of the surfactant to detach the droplet, giving a unique logarithmic relationship with detachment time.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 9, 014002] Published Tue Jan 09, 2024

Author(s): Anu V. S. Nath, Anubhab Roy, S. Ravichandran, and Rama Govindarajan

The dispersion of heavy inertial particles in a cellular flow made of Taylor-Green vortices is found to display non-ergodicity and sensitive dependence on initial particle location. Even more surprising is the sensitive and non-monotonic dependence on Stokes number. The large time dispersion of particles can be ballistic (red), diffusive (green) or trapped (blue), depending on where they have started in the flow. Diffusive particles show chaotic dynamics. Here the mutually exclusive group of initial particle locations form a non-ergodic set (as in the figure), unlike a turbulent flow, which is known to be ergodic.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 9, 014302] Published Tue Jan 09, 2024

Author(s): Edward W. G. Skevington and Andrew J. Hogg

Density-driven flows climb out of topographic depressions if they are sufficiently energetic. We investigate the inertial dynamics of these unsteady flows theoretically as fluid climbs from a lower to an upper plateau and then simultaneously propagates away from and drains back into the depression. The volume of fluid that escapes the confinement diminishes with a power-law dependence upon time; the draining flow becomes self-similar, and the self-similarity is of the second kind, featuring an exponent which is a function of the frontal Froude number. The volume continues to decrease even when viscous processes are non-negligible and ultimately none of the fluid escapes from the depression.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 9, 014802] Published Tue Jan 09, 2024

Author(s): Jin-bo Cheng, Qi-you Liu, Li-jun Yang, Jun-xue Ren, Hai-bin Tang, Qing-fei Fu, and Luo Xie

Using a needle-plate electro-atomization experimental device, and applying a single pulse disturbance voltage signal, the response of the Taylor cone to a disturbance signal was explored. At the experimental level, the coupling relationship between polarization charge relaxation time and the oscillation period of the Taylor cone was uncovered, revealing the oscillation mechanism of the Taylor cone under this voltage disturbance.

[Phys. Rev. Fluids 9, 013701] Published Mon Jan 08, 2024