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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Enhancement to Fusion Reactivity in Sheared Flows

Sheared flow increases the reactivity of fusion plasma. In unmagnetized plasma with flow gradients comparable to the mean free path of reacting ions, fusion reactivity can be more than doubled. The effect is of particular relevance to inertial confinement fusion (ICF), where it allows implosion kinetic energy to contribute to the fusion burn even before thermalizing. Finally, because colder fuel stops alpha particles more quickly, ignition is possible in a smaller volume, substantially reducing energy requirements in fast-ignition designs.

fast ignition↗
DOE OSTI2025

Suppression of the collisionless tearing mode by flow shear: implications for reconnection onset in the Alfvénic solar wind

We analyse the collisionless tearing mode instability of a current sheet with a strong shear flow across the layer. The growth rate decreases with increasing shear flow, and is completely stabilised as the shear flow becomes Alfvénic. We also show that, in the presence of strong flow shear, the tearing mode growth rate decreases with increasing background ion-to-electron temperature ratio, the opposite behaviour to the tearing mode without flow shear. We find that even a relatively small flow shear is enough to dramatically alter the scaling behaviour of the mode, because the growth rate is small compared with the shear flow across the ion scales (but large compared with shear flow across the electron scales). Our results may explain the relative absence of reconnection events in the near-Sun Alfvénic solar wind observed recently by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS1992

Predicting equilibrium states with Reynolds stress closures in channel flow and homogeneous shear flow

Turbulent channel flow and homogeneous shear flow have served as basic building block flows for the testing and calibration of Reynolds stress models. A direct theoretical connection is made between homogeneous shear flow in equilibrium and the log-layer of fully-developed turbulent channel flow. It is shown that if a second-order closure model is calibrated to yield good equilibrium values for homogeneous shear flow it will also yield good results for the log-layer of channel flow provided that the Rotta coefficient is not too far removed from one. Most of the commonly used second-order closure models introduce an ad hoc wall reflection term in order to mask deficient predictions for the log-layer of channel flow that arise either from an inaccurate calibration of homogeneous shear flow or from the use of a Rotta coefficient that is too large. Illustrative model calculations are presented to demonstrate this point which has important implications for turbulence modeling.

Abid, R.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Predicting equilibrium states with Reynolds stress closures in channel flow and homogeneous shear flow

Turbulent channel flow and homogeneous shear flow have served as basic building block flows for the testing and calibration of Reynolds stress models. A direct theoretical connection is made between homogeneous shear flow in equilibrium and the log-layer of fully-developed turbulent channel flow. It is shown that if a second-order closure model is calibrated to yield good equilibrium values for homogeneous shear flow it will also yield good results for the log-layer of channel flow provided that the Rotta coefficient is not too far removed from one. Most of the commonly used second-order closure models introduce an ad hoc wall reflection term in order to mask deficient predictions for the log-layer of channel flow that arise either from an inaccurate calibration of homogeneous shear flow or from the use of a Rotta coefficient that is too large. Illustrative model calculations are presented to demonstrate this point which has important implications for turbulence modeling.

Abid, R.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Modeling of Wall-Bounded Complex Flows and Free Shear Flows

Various wall-bounded flows with complex geometries and free shear flows have been studied with a newly developed realizable Reynolds stress algebraic equation model. The model development is based on the invariant theory in continuum mechanics. This theory enables us to formulate a general constitutive relation for the Reynolds stresses. Pope was the first to introduce this kind of constitutive relation to turbulence modeling. In our study, realizability is imposed on the truncated constitutive relation to determine the coefficients so that, unlike the standard k-E eddy viscosity model, the present model will not produce negative normal stresses in any situations of rapid distortion. The calculations based on the present model have shown an encouraging success in modeling complex turbulent flows.

Shih, Tsan-Hsing↗
NASA NTRS1993

Numerical simulation of non-Newtonian free shear flows

Free shear flows, like those of mixing layers, are encountered in aerodynamics, in the atmosphere, and in the ocean as well as in many industrial applications such as flow reactors or combustion chambers. It is, therefore, crucial to understand the mechanisms governing the process of transition to turbulence in order to predict and control the evolution of the flow. Delaying transition to turbulence as far downstream as possible allows a gain in energy expenditure while accelerating the transition can be of interest in processes where high mixing is desired. Various methods, including the use of polymer additives, can be effective in controlling fluid flows. The drag reduction obtained by the addition of small amounts of high polymers has been an active area of research for the last three decades. It is now widely believed that polymer additives can affect the stability of a large variety of flows and that dilute solutions of these polymers have been shown to produce drag reductions of over 80 percent in internal flows and over 60 percent in external flows under a wide range of conditions. The major thrust of this work is to study the effects of polymer additives on the stability of the incompressible mixing layer through large scale numerical simulations. In particular, we focus on the two dimensional flow and examine how the presence of viscoelasticity may affect the typical structures of the flow, namely roll-up and pairing of vortices.

Homsy, G. M.↗
DOE OSTI2025

The effect of shear flow on the resistive tearing instability

We develop a new scaling theory for the resistive tearing mode instability of a current sheet with a strong shear flow across the layer. The growth rate decreases with increasing flow shear and is completely stabilized as the shear flow becomes Alfvénic: both in the constant-Ψ regime, as in previous results, but we also show that the growth rate is in fact suppressed more strongly in the nonconstant-Ψ regime. As a consequence, for sufficiently large flow shear, the maximum of the growth rate is always affected by the shear suppression, and the wavenumber at which this maximum growth rate is attained is an increasing function of the strength of the flow shear. These results may be important for the onset of reconnection in imbalanced MHD turbulence.

astrophysical plasmas↗
NASA NTRS2013

Modeling of Turbulent Free Shear Flows

The modeling of turbulent free shear flows is crucial to the simulation of many aerospace applications, yet often receives less attention than the modeling of wall boundary layers. Thus, while turbulence model development in general has proceeded very slowly in the past twenty years, progress for free shear flows has been even more so. This paper highlights some of the fundamental issues in modeling free shear flows for propulsion applications, presents a review of past modeling efforts, and identifies areas where further research is needed. Among the topics discussed are differences between planar and axisymmetric flows, development versus self-similar regions, the effect of compressibility and the evolution of compressibility corrections, the effect of temperature on jets, and the significance of turbulent Prandtl and Schmidt numbers for reacting shear flows. Large eddy simulation greatly reduces the amount of empiricism in the physical modeling, but is sensitive to a number of numerical issues. This paper includes an overview of the importance of numerical scheme, mesh resolution, boundary treatment, sub-grid modeling, and filtering in conducting a successful simulation.

Yoder, Dennis A.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Nonlinear evolution of resistive tearing mode instability with shear flow and viscosity

The effect of shear flow on the nonlinear evolution of the tearing mode is investigated via numerical solutions of the resistive MHD equations in slab geometry, using a finite-difference alternative-direction implicit method. It was found that, when the shear flow is small (V less than 0.3), the tearing mode saturates within one resistive time, whereas for larger flows the nonlinear saturation develops on longer time scales. The magnetic energy release decreases and the saturation time increases with increasing values of V for both small and large resistivity. Shear flow was found to decrease the saturated magnetic island width and to generate currents far from the tearing layer. Results suggest that equilibrium shear flow may improve the confinement of tokamak plasma.

Ofman, L.↗
NASA NTRS1994

The stabilizing effect of compressibility in turbulent shear flow

Direct numerical simulation of turbulent homogeneous shear flow is performed in order to clarify compressibility effects on the turbulence growth in the flow. The two Mach numbers relevant to homogeneous shear flow are the turbulent Mach number M(t) and the gradient Mach number M(g). Two series of simulations are performed where the initial values of M(g) and M(t) are increased separately. The growth rate of turbulent kinetic energy is observed to decrease in both series of simulations. This 'stabilizing' effect of compressibility on the turbulent energy growth rate is observed to be substantially larger in the DNS series where the initial value of M(g) is changed. A systematic companion of the different DNS cues shows that the compressibility effect of reduced turbulent energy growth rate is primarily due to the reduced level of turbulence production and not due to explicit dilatational effects. The reduced turbulence production is not a mean density effect since the mean density remains constant in compressible homogeneous shear flow. The stabilizing effect of compressibility on the turbulence growth is observed to increase with the gradient Mach number M(g) in the homogeneous shear flow DNS. Estimates of M(g) for the mixing and the boundary layer are obtained. These estimates show that the parameter M(g) becomes much larger in the high-speed mixing layer relative to the high-speed boundary layer even though the mean flow Mach numbers are the same in the two flows. Therefore, the inhibition of turbulent energy production and consequent 'stabilizing' effect of compressibility on the turbulence (over and above that due to the mean density variation) is expected to be larger in the mixing layer relative to the boundary layer in agreement with experimental observations.

Sarkar, S.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Turbulization of shear flows in astrophysics

The problem of instability in shear flows is treated in a number of works which present a global analysis of irrotational (potential) modes in a 2-D compressible shear flow, implying that, in the presence of reflecting boundaries, those modes can increase and that the characteristic time of the increase is several orders as high as the dynamic time in the medium. Due to the slowness of the increase of irrotational modes and to the problematic character of the theory's applicability for thin accretion disks, an attempt was made to develop an alternative theory of turbulization shear flows. It is quite contrary to the above theory. Instead of the global analysis, a local one is made far from the flow boundaries. Instead of irrotational perturbations, vortical ones are examined. Lastly, the medium is considered to be incompressible. The flow in the accretion disk can be modeled by a plane Couette flow, without regard for boundary conditions: it can be modeled by a plane shear flow in infinite incompressible fluid. According to this scenario, there is a critical perturbation level in the free shear flow. If the level of initial perturbations exceeds the critical one, the flow is turbulized.

Chagelishvili, G. D.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Effects of organized turbulence structures on the phase distortion in a coherent optical beam propagating through a turbulent shear flow

Phase distortion in a coherent optical beam propagating through a turbulent shear flow is studied. The instantaneous distribution of the index refraction is represented by a passive-scalar field in a computed homogeneous shear flow. The flow contains organized vortical structures (hairpin eddies), which are characteristic of turbulent shear flows. The phase distortion induced by turbulent fluctuations is calculated from the optical path difference through the flow. A conceptual model is proposed for the distribution of scalar fluctuations produced by the hairpin vortices in the shear flow. It is shown that the phase distortion of an optical beam can be minimized by propagating the beam at an angle approximately normal to the organized vortical structures in a turbulent shear flow.

Truman, C. Randall↗
DOE OSTI2024

Impact of the Out‐Of‐Plane Flow Shear on Magnetic Reconnection at the Flanks of Earth's Magnetopause

Abstract Magnetic reconnection changes the magnetic field topology and facilitates the energy and particle exchange at magnetospheric boundaries such as the Earth's magnetopause. The flow shear perpendicular to the reconnecting plane prevails at the flank magnetopause under southward interplanetary magnetic field conditions. However, the effect of the out‐of‐plane flow shear on asymmetric reconnection is an open question. In this study, we utilize kinetic simulations to investigate the impact of the out‐of‐plane flow shear on asymmetric reconnection. By systematically varying the flow shear strength, we analyze the flow shear effects on the reconnection rate, the diffusion region structure, and the energy conversion rate. We find that the reconnection rate increases with the upstream out‐of‐plane flow shear, and for the same upstream conditions, it is higher at the dusk side than at the dawn side. The diffusion region is squeezed in the outflow direction due to magnetic pressure which is proportional to the square of the Alfvén Mach number of the shear flow. The out‐of‐plane flow shear increases the energy conversion rate , and for the same upstream conditions, the magnitude of is larger at the dusk side than at the dawn side. This study reveals that out‐of‐plane flow shear not only enhances the reconnection rate but also significantly boosts energy conversion, with more pronounced effects on the dusk‐side flank than on the dawn‐side flank. These insights pave the way for better understanding the solar wind‐magnetosphere interactions.

Liang, Haoming↗