The injection of a two-dimensional jet into a uniform stream is considered, the fluids being assumed inviscid and incompressible. When the total head of the jet is much larger than that of the uniform flow, the motion is characterized by two disparate length scales, and uniformly valid asymptotic solutions can be found by the method of matched expansions. Inner and outer expansions are developed for the jet and the external flow. The first-order outer solution in the jet is the usual thin jet approximation which fails in the neighbourhood of the jet exit except for 90° injection, when it is uniformly valid. The basic non-linearity introduced by the pressure condition along the vortex sheet separating the jet from the external flow appears as a non-linear boundary condition for the first-order outer solution in the external flow. A novel feature of the analysis is the necessity of imposing a logarithmic singularity as an ‘inner’ boundary condition for the outer solution in the external flow. The first-order fluid speed and streamline deflection angle are shown to be given correctly to O(1) uniformly in the external flow (for all injection angles) by the first-order outer solution.

Small amplitude waves on a shallow layer of water are studied from the point of view used in aerodynamic sound theory. It is shown that many aspects of the generation and propagation of water waves are similar to those of sound waves in air. Certain differences are also discussed. It is concluded that shallow water simulation can be employed in the study of some aspects of aerodynamically generated sound.

The stability is considered of the flow with velocity components \[ \{0,\Omega r[1+O(\epsilon^2)],\;2\epsilon\Omega r_0f(r/r_0)\} \] (where f(x) is a function of order one) in cylindrical polar co-ordinates (r, ϕ, z), bounded by the rigid cylinders r/r0 = x1 and r/r0 = 1 (0 [les ] x1 < 1). When ε [Lt ] 1, the flow is shown to be unstable to non-axisymmetric inviscid disturbances of sufficiently large axial wavelength. The case of Poiseuille flow in a rotating pipe is considered in more detail, and the growth rate of the most rapidly growing disturbance is found to be 2εΩ.

The second-order resonant interaction of two disturbances which are neutrally stable on a linear basis is investigated for cases when the mean flow is, first, an inviscid, homogeneous jet and, secondly, a stably stratified, antisymmetric shear layer for which the linear eigen-solutions are regular. For the former case, the periodic nature of the neutral disturbances is unaffected by the interaction. For the latter, the interaction can lead to an O(ε½) temporal growth rate of one disturbance, where ε is a characteristic disturbance amplitude.

Measurements of the pressure distribution around a sphere placed in aligned magnetic and velocity fields show that an increase in drag is mainly due to a decrease in the pressure on the base of the body. When magnetic forces are large compared to inertia forces, this decrease is due to a loss in total pressure along streamlines just outside the surface boundary layer and an acceleration of the flow to a velocity much larger than the reference velocity. Separation of a viscous boundary layer takes place behind the equator and still, to a large extent, controls the magnitude of the base pressure and the drag experienced by the sphere. A model consistent with these findings is presented.

An experimental investigation on reverse transition from turbulent to laminar flow in a two-dimensional channel was carried out. The reverse transition occurred when Reynolds number of an initially turbulent flow was reduced below a certain value by widening the duct in the lateral direction. The experiments were conducted at Reynolds numbers of 625, 865, 980 and 1250 based on half the height of the channel and the average of the mean velocity. At all these Reynolds numbers the initially turbulent mean velocity profiles tend to become parabolic. The longitudinal and vertical velocity fluctuations ($\overline{u^{\prime 2}}$ and $\overline{v^{\prime 2}}$) averaged over the height of the channel decrease exponentially with distance downstream, but $\overline{u^{\prime}v^{\prime}} $ tends to become zero at a reasonably well-defined point. During reverse transition $\overline{u^{\prime}}\overline{v^{\prime}}/\sqrt{\overline{u^{\prime 2}}}\sqrt{\overline{v^{\prime 2}}}$ also decreases as the flow moves downstream and Lissajous figures taken with u’ and v’ signals confirm this trend. There is approximate similarly between $\overline{u^{\prime 2}} $ profiles if the value of $\overline{u^{\prime 2}_{\max}} $ and the distance from the wall at which it occurs are taken as the reference scales. The spectrum of $\overline{u^{\prime 2}} $ is almost similar at all stations and the non-dimensional spectrum is exponential in wave-number. All the turbulent quantities, when plotted in appropriate co-ordinates, indicate that there is a definite critical Reynolds number of 1400±50 for reverse transition.

The starting flow of a viscous fluid past a circular cylinder at Reynolds numbers 40 and 100 has been obtained by a numerical method. The method used is that developed by Payne (1957) but it has been extended here to cover a larger time interval.

At Reynolds number 40 Payne's result for the drag coefficient at time t = 6 is in reasonable agreement with Kawaguti's (1953) result for the steady case but if Payne's computation, is extended to time t ≈ 24, the result is in better agreement with Apelt's (1961) result for the steady case. Also, a further investigation into the case R = 100 shows that Payne's mesh size is too crude. Similar observations can be made concerning the size of the standing vortices downstream of the circular cylinder and how they grow in time.

The motion of a semi-infinite incompressible fluid caused by the sinusoidal oscillation of a plane flat plate is termed Stokes's problem. When the plate starts from rest in a still fluid a transient solution must be added to Stokes's well-known steady-state result. This paper presents a closed-form expression for the transient solution. Previous answers have contained a non-standard integral which could not be evaluated. The answer presented herein contains exponentials and error functions of a complex argument. These functions are readily available in newer mathematical tables. Graphs of the transient solution are presented for both sin (T) and – cos (T) boundary conditions. Velocity distributions in the fluid are also plotted and it is found that the transient period is essentially complete in one-half cycle for the cosine oscillation and in a full cycle for the sine wave case.