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Sound generation in turbulent shear flows is examined. The emphasis is on simultaneous calculation of the turbulent flow along with the resulting sound generation rather than the alternative acoustic analogy approach. The first part of the paper is concerned with solid surface interaction. The second part concentrates on the sound generated by turbulence interacting with itself.
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental and omnipresent energy conversion process in plasma physics. Novel observations of fields and particles from Parker Solar Probe (PSP) have shown the absence of reconnection in a large number of current sheets in the near-Sun solar wind. Using near-Sun observations from PSP encounters 4–11 (2020 January–2022 March), we investigate whether reconnection onset might be suppressed by velocity shear. We compare estimates of the tearing mode growth rate in the presence of shear flow for time periods identified as containing reconnecting current sheets versus nonreconnecting times, finding systematically larger growth rates for reconnection periods. Upon examination of the parameters associated with reconnection onset, we find that 85% of the reconnection events are embedded in slow, non-Alfvénic wind streams. We compare with fast, slow non-Alfvénic, and slow Alfvénic streams, finding that the growth rate is suppressed in highly Alfvénic fast and slow wind, and reconnection is not seen in these wind types, as would be expected from our theoretical expressions. These wind streams have strong Alfvénic flow shear, consistent with the idea of reconnection suppression by such flows. This could help explain the frequent absence of reconnection events in the highly Alfvénic, near-Sun solar wind observed by PSP. Finally, we find a steepening of both the trace and magnitude magnetic field spectra within reconnection periods in comparison to ambient wind. We tie this to the dynamics of relatively balanced turbulence within these reconnection periods and the potential generation of compressible fluctuations.
The performance of three recently proposed second-order closure models is tested in benchmark turbulent shear flows. Both homogeneous shear flow and the log-layer of an equilibrium turbulent boundary layer are considered for this purpose. An objective analysis of the results leads to an assessment of these models that stands in contrast to that recently published by other authors. A variety of pitfalls in the formulation and testing of second-order closure models are uncovered by this analysis.
Stability of shear flow in thermally unstable atmosphere
Unstable shear flows and their relation to aerodynamic noise
Transient development of perturbations in inviscid stratified shear flow is investigated. Use is made of closed form analytic solutions that allow concise identification of optimally growing plane-wave solutions for the case of an unbounded flow with constant shear and stratification. For the case of channel flow, variational techniques are employed to determine the optimally growing disturbances. The maximum energy growth attained over a specific time interval decreases continuously with increasing stratification, and no special significance attaches to Ri = 0.25. Indeed, transient growth can be substantial even for Ri = O(1). A general lower bound on the energy growth attained by an optimal perturbation in a stratified flow over a given time interval is the square root of the growth attained by the corresponding perturbation in unstratified flow. Enhanced perturbation persistence is found for mean-flow stratification lying in the range Ri between 0.1 and 0.3. Small but finite perturbations in mean flow with Ri less than 0.4 produce regions with locally negative total density gradient, which are expected to overturn. Although the perturbations are of wave form, buoyancy fluxes mediate transfer between perturbation kinetic and potential energy during transient development, thus implying that buoyancy flux is not a determinative diagnostic for distinguishing between waves and turbulence in stratified flows.
The microfluidic-based point-of-care (POC) diagnostic tool has garnered significant interest in recent years, offering rapid and cost-effective disease detection. There is a growing trend toward integrating microfluidic platforms with biosensors, aligning lab-on-a-chip technologies with POC diagnostic devices. Despite numerous efforts to incorporate biosensors into microfluidic systems, researchers have performed very limited investigations on the stability of biomarker detection when biosensors operate under microfluidic shear flow conditions. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are a widely employed material in capacitive biosensors for antibody immobilization and sensitivity enhancement. However, AuNPs have limitations in providing stable detection of biomarkers within microfluidic shear flow due to their agglomeration nature. This study addresses these limitations by employing 2 kDa polyethylene glycol (PEG) as an intermediate biofunctional layer to immobilize CA-125 antibodies on gold-interdigitated electrodes for the stable and accurate detection of CA-125 antigens. The stabilities and sensitivities of AuNPs and PEG-coated biosensors are evaluated under both static drop and microfluidic shear flow conditions for CA-125 antigen detection. The experimental results demonstrate a capacitive signal response (5660 pF at 10 kHz) 2.2 times higher using the PEG-coated biosensor than the signal (2551 pF at 10 kHz) measured by the AuNP-coated biosensor in the detection of CA-125 antigen–antibody conjugation under static drop conditions, indicating the higher sensitivity of the PEG-coated biosensor. Additionally, the PEG-coated biosensor exhibits better consistency for the CA-125 antigen detection between static drop and microfluidic shear flow conditions (Cp decrease in percentage (ΔCp%↓) = 2.9% at 10 kHz) compared to the electrical signals measured using the AuNP-coated biosensor (ΔCp%↓ = 32.4% at 10 kHz), which suggests that the PEG-coated biosensor demonstrates higher stability for CA-125 antigen detection under microfluidic shear flow conditions. With these significant improvements brought by the PEG-coated biosensor, especially under microfluidic conditions, a substantial hurdle in developing electrical biosensors for POC diagnostic applications has been overcome, expediting further advancements in the field.
Despite the extensive research on bubble collapse near rigid walls, the bubble collapse dynamics in the presence of shear flow near a rigid wall is poorly understood. We conduct direct simulations of the Navier–Stokes equations to explore the bubble dynamics and pressures during bubble collapse near a rigid, flat wall under linear shear flow conditions. We examine the dependence of the bubble collapse morphology and wall pressures on the initial bubble location and shear rate. We find that shear distorts the bubble, generating two re-entrant jets – one developing from the side opposite to the mean flow and the other from the far end toward the wall. Upon impact of the jet on the opposite side of the bubble, water-hammer shocks are produced, which propagate outward and interact with the convoluted bubble shape. The shock stretches the bubble towards the wall, resulting in a closer impact location for the jet originating from the far end compared with the case with no shear flow. The water-hammer pressure location can be approximated as the theoretical distance travelled by a particle initialised at the bubble centre with the corresponding constant shear flow velocity. The maximum wall pressures can thus be predicted by considering the distance between the far jet impingement location and the wall along the wall-normal direction. As the shear rate is increased, the maximum wall pressure increases, although only marginally. We determine the critical initial stand-off distance from the wall at which the bubble morphology is shear dominated, i.e. characterised by converging re-entrant jets.
Unstable shear flows and their relation to aerodynamic noise
Classical models of magnetic reconnection consist of a small diffusion region bounded by two symmetric slow shocks, across which the plasma is accelerated. Asymmetries often present in space plasmas are sheared plasma flow and dissimilar plasma densities on the two sides of current sheets. In this paper, we investigate magnetic reconnection in the presence of a shear flow and an asymmetric density across the current sheet using two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. The results demonstrate that magnetic reconnection can occur only for a plasma flow velocity (in the frame of the X line) which is below the Alfven speed in each inflow region. This limits the velocity of the X line to a certain range for a given flow shear and provides an upper limit to the total velocity shear at which reconnection ceases to operate. Depending on the direction of the flow in the adjacent inflow region, the effects from the sheared flow and from the density asymmetry will compete with or enhance each other in respect to the magnitude and location of the currents which bound the outflow regions. The results are applied to the dayside and flank regions of the magnetosphere. For the dayside region where the magnetosheath flow is slow, the magnetic field transition region is thin and the accelerated flow is earthward of the sharp current layer (magnetopause). At the flanks tailward of the X line, shear flow and density asymmetry effects compete making the magnetic field transition layer broad with the high-speed flow contained within the transition region which explains corresponding observations. At the flanks sunward of the X line, shear flow and density asymmetry effects enhance each other and lead to a strong current sheet on the magnetosheath side of the accelerated flow. The total volume affected by magnetic reconnection is much larger than the steady state region. A large bulge region precedes the steady state region. Qualitatively, the bulge and the steady state region have similar signatures and both can explain observations. We provide criteria in order to distinguish between the bulge and the steady state region in observations.
Recent studies of free shear flows are reviewed. Included are experimental studies of: excited and unexcited circular and elliptic jets, plane wake and mixing layers, and effects of excitation on augmentation and reduction of jet turbulence and jet noise. It is shown that proper excitation can produce both large increases and large decreases in turbulence and Reynolds stress level, mixing and noise generation, suggesting promising technological applications of self-excited jets such as whistler jets. It is also argued that 'ribs' or longitudinal vortices play an important role in production and mixing in free, and perhaps all, turbulent shear flows. The 'cut-and-connect' interaction of vortical structures is proposed as a key mechanism for coherent structure breakdown, mixing, turbulence production, and aerodynamic noise generation. A simple analysis of the viscous vorticity equation using symmetry of configurations of vortical structures before and after the interaction gives realistic predictions.
Reynolds stress calculations of homogeneous turbulent shear flow are conducted with a second-order closure model modified to account for non-equilibrium vortex stretching in the dissipation rate transport equation, as recently proposed by Bernard and Speziale. As with the earlier reported k-epsilon model calculations incorporating this vortex stretching effect, a production-equals-dissipation equilibrium is obtained with bounded turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation. However, this equilibrium is not achieved until the dimensionless time greater than 60, an elapsed time that is at least twice as large as any of those considered in previous numerical and physical experiments on homogeneous shear flow. Direct quantitative comparisons between the model predictions and the results of experiments are quite favorable. In particular, it is shown that the inclusion of this non-equilibrium vortex stretching effect has the capability of explaining the significant range of production to dissipation ratios observed in experiments.
Reynolds stress calculations of homogeneous turbulent shear flow are conducted with a second-order closure model modified to account for nonequilibrium vortex stretching in the dissipation rate transport equation as recently proposed by Bernard and Speziale (1992). As with the earlier reported K-epsilon model calculations incorporating this vortex stretching effect, a production-equals-dissipation equilibrium is obtained with bounded turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation. However, this equilibrium is now not achieved until the dimensionless time St greater than 60 - an elapsed time that is at least twice as large as any of those considered in previous numerical and physical experiments on homogeneous shear flow. Direct quantitative comparisons between the model predictions and the results of experiments are quite favorable. In particular, it is shown that the inclusion of this nonequilibrium vortex stretching effect has the capability of explaining the significant range of production to dissipation ratios observed in experiments.
High shear flow of partially crystalline polyethylene
Compressible shear flows and drag reduction were examined and three methods are addressed: (1) the analytical and numerical aspects of conformal mapping were summarized and a new method for computation of these maps is presented; (2) the computer code SPECFD for solution of the three dimensional time dependent Navier-Stokes equations for compressible flow on the CYBER 203 computer is described; (3) results of two equation turbulence modeling of turbulent flow over wavy walls are presented. A modified Jones-Launder model is used in two dimensional spectral code for flow in general wavy geometries.
Stability of piecewice linear velocity profile of shear flow in convectively unstable layer
The application of the inviscid instability approach to externally excited turbulent free shear flows at high Reynolds numbers is explored. Attention is given to the cases of a small-deficit plane turbulent wake, a plane turbulent jet, an axisymmetric jet, the nonlinear evolution of instabilities in free shear flows, the concept of the 'preferred mode', vortex pairing in turbulent mixing layers, and experimental results for the control of free turbulent shear layers. The special features often attributed to pairing or to the preferred mode are found to be difficult to comprehend; the concept of feedback requires further substantiation in the case of incompressible flow.
Interactions of long-wave solitons propagating in shear flows are described by a coupled pair of Korteweg-de Vries equations. The basic equation of motion for the analysis is the quasi-geostrophic forecast equation, and the interaction of two wave modes is studied. The solution for mode 1-mode 2 interaction of solitary waves in an asymmetric shear flow of a barotropic atmosphere with divergence is constructed. Streamline patterns for certain flows are obtained. An unsteady solitary wave solution for a modified Korteweg-de Vries equation is derived.