Related papers: A nonlinear elastic instability in channel flows a…
We present a combined experimental, numerical and theoretical investigation of the geometric scaling of the onset of a purely-elastic flow instability in a serpentine channel. Good qualitative agreement is obtained between experiments,…
Fluid transport in microfluidic systems typically is laminar due to the low Reynolds number characteristic of the flow. The inclusion of suspended polymers imparts elasticity to fluids, allowing instabilities to be excited when substantial…
Plane Couette flow of visco-elastic fluids is shown to exhibit a purely elastic subcritical instability in spite of being linearly stable. The mechanism of this instability is proposed and the nonlinear stability analysis of plane Couette…
It is shown that a channel flow of a dilute polymer solution between two widely spaced cylinders hindering the flow is an important paradigm of an unbounded flow in the case in which the channel wall is located sufficiently far from the…
Diverse processes rely on the viscous flow of polymer solutions through porous media. In many cases, the macroscopic flow resistance abruptly increases above a threshold flow rate in a porous medium---but not in bulk solution. The reason…
In this work, we report numerical results on the flow instability and bifurcation of a viscoelastic fluid in the upstream region of a confined cylinder in a narrow channel. Two-dimensional direct numerical simulations based on the FENE-P…
A long cylindrical cavity through a soft solid forms a soft microfluidic channel, or models a vascular capillary. We observe experimentally that, when such a channel bears a pressurized fluid, it first dilates homogeneously, but then…
Solutions of long, flexible polymer molecules are complex fluids that simultaneously exhibit fluid-like and solid-like behaviour. When subjected to an external flow, dilute polymer solutions exhibit elastic turbulence - a unique, chaotic…
We investigate here linear stability in a canonical three-dimensional boundary layer generated by the superposition of a spanwise pressure gradient upon an otherwise standard channel flow. As the main result, we introduce a simple…
Although the critical Reynolds number for linear instability of the laminar flow in a straight pipe is infinite, we show that it is finite for a divergent pipe, and approaches infinity as the inverse of the divergence angle. The velocity…
The stability of buoyant flows occurring in the mixed convection regime for a viscous fluid in a horizontal plane-parallel channel with adiabatic walls is investigated. The basic flow features a parallel velocity field under stationary…
We consider the stability of a system of equations which are a singular perturbation of the incompressible rigid-plastic flow equations used to model granular flow. A linear stability analysis shows that solutions of these equations are…
Recently, detailed experiments on visco-elastic channel flow have provided convincing evidence for a nonlinear instability scenario which we had argued for based on calculations for visco-elastic Couette flow. Motivated by these experiments…
Polymer solutions are often injected in porous media for applications such as oil recovery and groundwater remediation. As the fluid navigates the tortuous pore space, elastic stresses build up, causing the flow to become unstable at…
The hydrodynamics of viscoelastic materials (for example polymer melts and solutions) presents interesting and complex phenomena, for example instabilities and turbulent flow at very low Reynolds numbers due to normal stress effects and the…
In this paper, we discuss whether the instability of viscoelastic flow around a circular cylinder is subcritical or supercritical by numerical simulation. The Oldroyd-B model is selected to describe the viscoelastic constitutive…
We study flow driven through a finite-length planar rigid channel by a fixed upstream flux, where a segment of one wall is replaced by a pre-stressed elastic beam subject to uniform external pressure. The steady and unsteady systems are…
Dilute polymer solutions are known to exhibit purely elastic instabilities even when the fluid inertia is negligible. Here we report the quantitative evidence of two consecutive oscillatory elastic instabilities in an elongation flow of a…
Viscoelastic shear flows support additional chaotic states beyond simple Newtonian turbulence. In vanishing Reynolds number flows, the nonlinearity in the polymer evolution equation alone can sustain inertialess 'elastic' turbulence (ET)…
We investigate the linear instability of flows that are stable according to Rayleigh's criterion for rotating fluids. Using Taylor-Couette flow as a primary test case, we develop large Reynolds number matched asymptotic expansion theories.…