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We investigate the coupling dynamics of interfacial waves in liquid metal batteries and its effects on the battery’s operation safety. Similar to aluminium reduction cells, liquid metal batteries can be highly susceptible to magnetohydrodynamically exited interfacial instabilities. The resulting waves are capable of provoking short-circuits. Owing to the presence of two metal-electrolyte interfaces that may step into resonance, the wave dynamics in liquid metal batteries is particularly complex. In the first part of this paper, we present a potential flow analysis of coupled gravity–capillary interfacial waves. While we are focusing here on liquid metal batteries with circular cross-section, the theory is applicable to arbitrary stably stratified three-layer systems. Analytical expressions for the amplitude ratio and the wave frequencies are derived. It is shown that the wave coupling can be completely described by two independent dimensionless parameters. We further provide a decoupling criterion that suggests that wave coupling will be present in most future liquid metal batteries. In the second part, the theory is validated by comparing it with multiphase direct numerical simulations. An accompanying parameter study is conducted to analyse the system stability for interfaces coupled to varying degrees. Three different coupling regimes are identified involving characteristic coupling dynamics. For strongly coupled interfaces we observe novel instabilities that may have beneficial effects on the operational safety.

We present a combined experimental and theoretical investigation of the dynamics of liquid imbibition through paper. The Washburn equation is widely used to describe the dynamics of capillary flow through paper, but this classical model has limited accuracy, which often makes it difficult to use in developing analytic systems such as paper-based microfluidic devices. We here report that the internal cavity of the cellulose fibres composing paper is significantly responsible for the limited accuracy of the Washburn equation. Our experiments demonstrated that liquid can be absorbed in the internal cavity of the cellulose fibres as well as in the inter-fibre pores formed by the fibre network. We developed a mathematical model for liquid imbibition by considering the flow through the intra-fibre pores based on experimental measurements of the intra-structure of cellulose fibres. The model markedly improves the prediction of the liquid absorption length, compared with the results of the Washburn equation, thus revealing the physics behind the limits of the Washburn equation. This study suggests that the accurate description of capillary imbibition through paper require parameters characterizing the internal pores of the cellulose fibres comprising the paper. Our results not only provide a new insight into porous media flows with different sized pores, but also provide a theoretical background for flow control in paper-based microfluidic systems.

We develop a frame-invariant theory of material spike formation during flow separation over a no-slip boundary in two-dimensional flows with arbitrary time dependence. Based on the exact curvature evolution of near-wall material lines, our theory identifies both fixed and moving flow separation, is effective also over short time intervals, and admits a rigorous instantaneous limit. As a byproduct, we derive explicit formulae for the evolution of material line curvature and the curvature rate for general compressible flows. The material backbone that we identify acts first as the precursor and later as the centrepiece of unsteady Lagrangian flow separation. We also discover a previously undetected spiking point where the backbone of separation connects to the boundary, and derive wall-based analytical formulae for its location. Finally, our theory explains the perception of off-wall separation in unsteady flows and provides conditions under which such a perception is justified. We illustrate our results on several analytical and experimental flows.

Non-parallelism, i.e. the effect of the slow variation of the boundary-layer flow in the chordwise and spanwise directions, in general produces a higher-order correction to the growth rate of instability modes. Here we investigate stationary crossflow vortices, which arise due to the instability of the three-dimensional boundary layer over a swept wing, focusing on a region near the leading edge where non-parallelism plays a leading-order role in their development. In this regime, the vortices align themselves with the local wall shear at leading order, and so have a marginally separated triple-deck structure, consisting of the inviscid main boundary layer, an upper deck and a viscous sublayer. We find that the streamwise (and spanwise) variations of both the base flow and the modal shape must be accounted for. An explicit expression for the growth rate is derived that shows a neutral point occurs in this regime, downstream of which non-parallelism has a stabilising effect. Stationary crossflow vortices thus have a viscous and non-parallel genesis near the leading edge. If an ‘effective pressure minimum’ occurs within this region then the growth rate becomes unbounded, and so the previous analysis is regularised within a localised region around it. A new instability is identified. The mode maintains its three-tiered structure, but the pressure perturbation now plays a passive role. Downstream, the instability evolves into a Cowley, Hocking & Tutty (Phys. Fluids, vol. 28, 1985, pp. 441–443) instability associated with a critical layer located in the lower deck. Finally, we consider the receptivity of the flow in the non-parallel regime: generation of stationary crossflow modes by arrays of chordwise-localised, spanwise-periodic surface roughness elements. The flow responds differently to different Fourier spectral content of the roughness, giving the lower deck a two-part structure. We find that roughness elements with sharper edges generate stronger modes. For roughness elements of fairly moderate height, the resulting nonlinear forcing leads to the so-called super-linearity of receptivity, namely, the amplitude of the generated crossflow mode deviates from the linear dependence on the roughness height even though the perturbation in the boundary layer remains linear.

The influences of non-Oberbeck–Boussinesq (NOB) effects on flow instabilities and bifurcation characteristics of Rayleigh–Bénard convection are examined. The working fluid is air with reference Prandtl number $Pr=0.71$ and contained in two-dimensional rigid cavities of finite aspect ratios. The fluid flow is governed by the low-Mach-number equations, accounting for the NOB effects due to large temperature difference involving flow compressibility and variations of fluid viscosity and thermal conductivity with temperature. The intensity of NOB effects is measured by the dimensionless temperature differential $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}$ . Linear stability analysis of the thermal conduction state is performed. An $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}^{2}$ scaling of the leading-order corrections of critical Rayleigh number $Ra_{cr}$ and disturbance growth rate $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}$ due to NOB effects is identified, which is a consequence of an intrinsic symmetry of the system. The influences of weak NOB effects on flow instabilities are further studied by perturbation expansion of linear stability equations with regard to $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}$ , and then the influence of aspect ratio $A$ is investigated in detail. NOB effects are found to enhance (weaken) flow stability in large (narrow) cavities. Detailed contributions of compressibility, viscosity and buoyancy actions on disturbance kinetic energy growth are identified quantitatively by energy analysis. Besides, a weakly nonlinear theory is developed based on centre-manifold reduction to investigate the NOB influences on bifurcation characteristics near convection onset, and amplitude equations are constructed for both codimension-one and -two cases. Rich bifurcation regimes are observed based on amplitude equations and also confirmed by direct numerical simulation. Weakly nonlinear analysis is useful for organizing and understanding these simulation results.

A theoretical study of the decay of plane gaseous detonations is presented. The analysis concerns the relaxation of weakly overdriven detonations toward the Chapman–Jouguet (CJ) regime when the supporting piston is suddenly arrested. The initial condition concerns propagation velocities ${\mathcal{D}}$ that are not far from that of the CJ wave ${\mathcal{D}}_{CJ}$ , $0<({\mathcal{D}}/{\mathcal{D}}_{CJ}-1)\ll 1$ . The unsteady inner structure of the detonation wave is taken into account analytically for small heat release, i.e. when the propagation Mach number of the CJ wave $M_{u_{CJ}}$ is small, $0<(M_{u_{CJ}}-1)\ll 1$ . Under such conditions the flow is transonic across the inner structure. Then, with small differences between heat capacities (Newtonian limit), the problem reduces to an integral equation for the velocity of the lead shock. This equation governs the detonation dynamics resulting from the coupling of the unsteady inner structure with the self-similar dynamics of the centred rarefaction wave in the burnt gas. The key point of the asymptotic analysis is that the response time of the inner structure is larger than the reaction time. How, and to what extent, the result is relevant for real detonations is discussed in the text. In a preliminary step the steady-state approximation is revisited with particular attention paid to the location of the sonic condition.

We study experimentally the propagation of internal waves in two different three-dimensional (3D) geometries, with a special emphasis on the refractive focusing due to the 3D reflection of obliquely incident internal waves on a slope. Both studies are initiated by ray tracing calculations to determine the appropriate experimental parameters. First, we consider a 3D geometry, the classical set-up to get simple, two-dimensional (2D) parallelogram-shaped attractors in which waves are forced in a direction perpendicular to a sloping bottom. Here, however, the forcing is of reduced extent in the along-slope, transverse direction. We show how the refractive focusing mechanism explains the formation of attractors over the whole width of the tank, even away from the forcing region. Direct numerical simulations confirm the dynamics, emphasize the role of boundary conditions and reveal the phase shifting in the transverse direction. Second, we consider a long and narrow tank having an inclined bottom, to simply reproduce a canal. In this case, the energy is injected in a direction parallel to the slope. Interestingly, the wave energy ends up forming 2D internal wave attractors in planes that are transverse to the initial propagation direction. This focusing mechanism prevents indefinite transmission of most of the internal wave energy along the canal.

We present results on the global and local characterisation of heat transport in homogeneous bubbly flow. Experimental measurements were performed with and without the injection of ${\sim}2.5~\text{mm}$ diameter bubbles (corresponding to bubble Reynolds number $Re_{b}\approx 600$ ) in a rectangular water column heated from one side and cooled from the other. The gas volume fraction  $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ was varied in the range 0 %–5 %, and the Rayleigh number $Ra_{H}$ in the range $4.0\times 10^{9}{-}1.2\times 10^{11}$ . We find that the global heat transfer is enhanced up to 20 times due to bubble injection. Interestingly, for bubbly flow, for our lowest concentration $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}=0.5\,\%$ onwards, the Nusselt number $\overline{Nu}$ is nearly independent of $Ra_{H}$ , and depends solely on the gas volume fraction  $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ . We observe the scaling $\overline{Nu}\,\propto \,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}^{0.45}$ , which is suggestive of a diffusive transport mechanism, as found by Alméras et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 776, 2015, pp. 458–474). Through local temperature measurements, we show that the bubbles induce a huge increase in the strength of liquid temperature fluctuations, e.g. by a factor of 200 for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}=0.9\,\%$ . Further, we compare the power spectra of the temperature fluctuations for the single- and two-phase cases. In the single-phase cases, most of the spectral power of the temperature fluctuations is concentrated in the large-scale rolls/motions. However, with the injection of bubbles, we observe intense fluctuations over a wide range of scales, extending up to very high frequencies. Thus, while in the single-phase flow the thermal boundary layers control the heat transport, once the bubbles are injected, the bubble-induced liquid agitation governs the process from a very small bubble concentration onwards. Our findings demonstrate that the mixing induced by high Reynolds number bubbles ( $Re_{b}\approx 600$ ) offers a powerful mechanism for heat transport enhancement in natural convection systems.

The neutral curves of the boundary layer Görtler-vortex flow generated by free-stream disturbances, i.e., curves that distinguish the perturbation flow conditions of growth and decay, are computed through a receptivity study for different Görtler numbers, wavelengths, and low frequencies of the free-stream disturbance. The perturbations are defined as Klebanoff modes or strong and weak Görtler vortices, depending on their growth rate. The critical Görtler number below which the inviscid instability due to the curvature never occurs is obtained and the conditions for which only Klebanoff modes exist are thus revealed. A streamwise-dependent receptivity coefficient is defined and we discuss the impact of the receptivity on the $N$ -factor approach for transition prediction.

Second-mode wave growth within the hypersonic boundary layer of a slender cone is investigated experimentally using high-speed schlieren visualizations. Experiments were performed in AEDC Tunnel 9 over a range of unit Reynolds number conditions at a Mach number of approximately 14. A thin lens with a known density profile placed within the field of view enables calibration of the schlieren set-up, and the relatively high camera frame rates employed allow for the reconstruction of time-resolved pixel intensities at discrete streamwise locations. The calibration in conjunction with the reconstructed signals enables integrated spatial amplification rates ( $N$ factors) to be calculated for each unit Reynolds number condition and compared to $N$ factors computed from both pressure transducer measurements and linear parabolized stability equation (PSE) solutions. Good agreement is observed between $N$ factors computed from the schlieren measurements and those computed from the PSE solutions for the most-amplified second-mode frequencies. The streamwise development of $N$ factors calculated from the schlieren measurements compares favourably to that calculated from the pressure measurements with slight variations in the $N$ factor magnitudes calculated for harmonic frequencies. Finally, a bispectral analysis is carried out to identify nonlinear phase-coupled quadratic interactions present within the boundary layer. Multiple interactions are identified and revealed to be associated with the growth of disturbances at higher harmonic frequencies.

This paper presents a novel analytical model that predicts the two-way coupled aeroelastic response of a linear elastic plate in axial potential flow, including the effects of plate curvature. The plate deforms in dynamic balance of the inertia, elastic, and aerodynamic forces. Analytical solutions are obtained by deriving the generalized aerodynamic force with respect to the beam eigenfunctions, which are expressed in a Chebyshev polynomial expansion. Exact expressions are derived for the generated lift, thrust and required input power. The derived solution agrees well with the results reported in the literature for plate flutter and flapping wings.