Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics - Volume 46, 2014

Fluid flow phenomena are omnipresent; they can be observed and described in many locations and circumstances. However, in most cases, their presence does not stimulate an interest in science. We consider successively domains of activities in which the presence of fluid flow phenomena can be used: natural sites, industrial ones, sporting events, artistic creations and presentations, the production of images and books, science museums, cultural centers, and also popular mass media. The last section is devoted to outreach activities that can be practiced within the educational system.

Atmospheric boundary layers with weak stratification are relatively well described by similarity theory and numerical models for stationary horizontally homogeneous conditions. With common strong stratification, similarity theory becomes unreliable. The turbulence structure and interactions with the mean flow and small-scale nonturbulent motions assume a variety of scenarios. The turbulence is intermittent and may no longer fully satisfy the usual conditions for the definition of turbulence. Nonturbulent motions include wave-like motions and solitary modes, two-dimensional vortical modes, microfronts, intermittent drainage flows, and a host of more complex structures. The main source of turbulence may not be at the surface, but rather may result from shear above the surface inversion. The turbulence is typically not in equilibrium with the nonturbulent motions, sometimes preventing the formation of an inertial subrange. New observational and analysis techniques are expected to advance our understanding of the very stable boundary layer.

When surfactants adsorb at liquid surfaces, they not only decrease the surface tension, they also confer rheological properties to the surfaces. The most common rheological parameters are the surface compression elasticity and viscosity and the surface shear viscosity. These parameters usually depend on the timescale of the deformation, owing to surface relaxations, and on its amplitude, owing to nonlinear responses. In addition, surfactants can exchange between the bulk and surface, in a way that depends on the amount of bulk surfactant locally available. This complexity explains why the topic has progressed slowly over the years. This review describes the current knowledge, focusing on recent advances, and gives examples of phenomena in which surface rheology plays an important role.

The cellular detail of blood is an essential factor in its flow, especially in vessels or devices with size comparable to that of its suspended cells. This article motivates and reviews numerical simulation techniques that provide a realistic description of cell-scale blood flow by explicitly representing its coupled fluid and solid mechanics. Red blood cells are the principal focus because of their importance and because of their remarkable deformability, which presents particular simulation challenges. Such simulations must couple discretizations of the large-deformation elasticity of the cells with the viscous flow mechanics of the suspension. The Reynolds numbers are low, so the effectively linear fluid mechanics is amenable to a wide range of simulation methods, although the constitutive models and geometric factors of the coupled system introduce challenging nonlinearity. Particular emphasis is given to the relative merits of several fundamentally different simulation methods. The detailed description provided by such simulations is invaluable for advancing our scientific understanding of blood flow, and their ultimate impact will be in the design of biomedical tools and interventions.

Computational methods have been extended recently to allow for the presence of moving contact lines in simulated two-phase flows. The predictive capability offered by these methods is potentially large, joining theoretical and experimental methods. Several challenges rather unique to this area need to be overcome, however, notably regarding the conditions near a moving contact line and the very large separation of length scales in these flows. We first summarize the main models for moving contact lines and follow with an overview of computational methods that includes direct continuum approaches and macroscale models that resolve only the large-scale flow by modeling the effects of the conditions near the contact line using theory. Results are presented for contact-line motion on ideal as well as patterned and grooved surfaces and for extensions to account for complexities such as thermocapillarity and phase change.

The archetypal feature of a viscoplastic fluid is its yield stress: If the material is not sufficiently stressed, it behaves like a solid, but once the yield stress is exceeded, the material flows like a fluid. Such behavior characterizes materials common in industries such as petroleum and chemical processing, cosmetics, and food processing and in geophysical fluid dynamics. The most common idealization of a viscoplastic fluid is the Bingham model, which has been widely used to rationalize experimental data, even though it is a crude oversimplification of true rheological behavior. The popularity of the model is in its apparent simplicity. Despite this, the sudden transition between solid-like behavior and flow introduces significant complications into the dynamics, which, as a result, has resisted much analysis. Over recent decades, theoretical developments, both analytical and computational, have provided a better understanding of the effect of the yield stress. Simultaneously, greater insight into the material behavior of real fluids has been afforded by advances in rheometry. These developments have primed us for a better understanding of the various applications in the natural and engineering sciences.

In many continuous combustion processes, such as those found in aeroengines or gas turbines, the flame is stabilized by a swirling flow formed by aerodynamic swirlers. The dynamics of such swirling flames is of technical and fundamental interest. This article reviews progress in this field and begins with a discussion of the swirl number, a parameter that plays a central role in the definition of the flow structure and its response to incoming disturbances. Interaction between the swirler response and incoming acoustic perturbations generates a vorticity wave convected by the flow, which is accompanied by azimuthal velocity fluctuations. Axial and azimuthal velocities in turn define the flame response in terms of heat--release rate fluctuations. The nonlinear response of swirling flames to incoming disturbances is conveniently represented with a flame describing function (FDF), in other words, with a family of transfer functions depending on frequency and incident axial velocity amplitudes. The FDF, however, does not reflect all possible nonlinear interactions in swirling flows. This aspect is illustrated with experimental data and some theoretical arguments in the last part of this article, which concerns the interaction of incident acoustic disturbances with the precessing vortex core, giving rise to nonlinear fluctuations at the frequency difference.

Recent research in estuaries challenges the long-standing paradigm of the gravitationally driven estuarine circulation. In estuaries with relatively strong tidal forcing and modest buoyancy forcing, the tidal variation in stratification leads to a tidal straining circulation driven by tidal variation in vertical mixing, with a magnitude that may significantly exceed the gravitational circulation. For weakly stratified estuaries, vertical and lateral advection are also important contributors to the tidally driven residual circulation. The apparent contradiction with the conventional paradigm is resolved when the estuarine parameter space is mapped with respect to a mixing parameter M that is based on the ratio of the tidal timescale to the vertical mixing timescale. Estuaries with high M values exhibit strong tidal nonlinearity, and those with small M values show conventional estuarine dynamics. Estuaries with intermediate mixing rates show marked transitions between these regimes at timescales of the spring-neap cycle.

Gas-solid flows in nature and industrial applications are characterized by multiscale and nonlinear interactions that manifest as rich flow physics and pose unique modeling challenges. In this article, we review particle-resolved direct numerical simulation (PR-DNS) of the microscale governing equations for understanding gas-solid flow physics and obtaining quantitative information for model development. A clear connection between a microscale realization and meso/macroscale representation is necessary for PR-DNS to be used effectively for model development at the meso- and macroscale. Furthermore, the design of PR-DNS must address the computational challenges of parameterizing models in a high-dimensional parameter space and obtaining accurate statistics of flow properties from a finite number of realizations at acceptable grid resolution. This review also summarizes selected recent insights into the physics of momentum, kinetic energy, and heat transfer in gas-solid flows obtained from PR-DNS. Promising future applications of PR-DNS include the study of the effect of number fluctuations on hydrodynamics, instabilities in gas-solid flow, and wall-bounded flows.

Internal waves are important physical phenomena on the continental shelf/slope. They are often very energetic, and their breaking provides an important dissipation and mixing mechanism, with implications for biological productivity and sediment transport. Internal waves appear in a variety of forms and can break in a variety of ways. A consequence of their dispersion properties is the breaking of waves reflecting from, or being generated at, near-critical slopes. Breaking mechanisms associated with internal solitary waves include bottom boundary layer instabilities, shear instabilities in the interior of the water column, and wave overturning as they shoal. Shoaling can result in the formation of waves with trapped cores either at the surface or at the bottom. Theoretical, numerical, and laboratory studies have largely focused on simple geometries, whereas recent work has shown that the situation in the ocean is often much more complicated because of more complex geometries and the presence of a full hierarchy of fluid motions.

Humans are faced with a potentially disastrous global problem owing to the current emission of 32 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually into the atmosphere. A possible way to mitigate the effects is to store CO2 in large porous reservoirs within the Earth. Fluid mechanics plays a key role in determining both the feasibility and risks involved in this geological sequestration. We review current research efforts looking at the propagation of CO2 within the subsurface, the possible rates of leakage, the mechanisms that act to stably trap CO2, and the geomechanical response of the crust to large-scale CO2 injection. We conclude with an outline for future research.

An accumulated body of quantitative evidence shows that bluff-body wakes in stably stratified environments have an unusual degree of coherence and organization, so characteristic geometries such as arrays of alternating-signed vortices have very long lifetimes, as measured in units of buoyancy timescales, or in the downstream distance scaled by a body length. The combination of pattern geometry and persistence renders the detection of these wakes possible in principle. It now appears that identifiable signatures can be found from many disparate sources: Islands, fish, and plankton all have been noted to generate features that can be detected by climate modelers, hopeful navigators in open oceans, or hungry predators. The various types of wakes are reviewed with notes on why their signatures are important and to whom. A general theory of wake pattern formation is lacking and would have to span many orders of magnitude in Reynolds number.

The development and capabilities of fast-responding pressure-sensitive paint (fast PSP) are reviewed within the context of recent applications to aerodynamic and acoustic investigations. PSP is an optical technique for determining surface pressure distributions by measuring changes in the intensity of emitted light, whereas fast PSP is an extension applicable to unsteady flows and acoustics. Most fast PSP formulations are based on the development of porous binders that allow for rapid oxygen diffusion and interaction with the chemical sensor. This article reviews the development of porous binders, the selection of luminophore molecules suitable for unsteady testing, dynamic calibrations of PSP, data-acquisition methods, and noteworthy applications for flow and acoustic diagnostics. Calibrations of the dynamic response of fast PSP show a flat frequency response to at least 6 kHz, with some paint formulations exceeding a response of 1 MHz. Various applications of fast PSP are discussed that highlight the capabilities of the technique, and concluding remarks highlight the need for the future development of fast PSP.

This review highlights the profound and unexpected ways in which viscosity varying in space and time can affect flow. The most striking manifestations are through alterations of flow stability, as established in model shear flows and industrial applications. Future studies are needed to address the important effect of viscosity stratification in such diverse environments as Earth's core, the Sun, blood vessels, and the re-entry of spacecraft.

The free-surface impact of solid objects has been investigated for well over a century. This canonical problem is influenced by many physical parameters, including projectile geometry, material properties, fluid properties, and impact parameters. Through advances in high-speed imaging and visualization techniques, discoveries about the underlying physics have improved our understanding of these phenomena. Improvements to analytical and numerical models have led to critical insights into cavity formation, the depth and time of pinch-off, forces, and trajectories for myriad different impact parameters. This topic spans a wide range of regimes, from low-speed entry phenomena dominated by surface tension to high-speed ballistics, for which cavitation is important. This review surveys experimental, theoretical, and numerical studies over this broad range, utilizing canonical images where possible to enhance intuition and insight into the rich phenomena.

Fluid manipulations at the microscale and beyond are powerfully enabled through the use of 10–1,000-MHz acoustic waves. A superior alternative in many cases to other microfluidic actuation techniques, such high-frequency acoustics is almost universally produced by surface acoustic wave devices that employ electromechanical transduction in wafer-scale or thin-film piezoelectric media to generate the kinetic energy needed to transport and manipulate fluids placed in adjacent microfluidic structures. These waves are responsible for a diverse range of complex fluid transport phenomena—from interfacial fluid vibration and drop and confined fluid transport to jetting and atomization—underlying a flourishing research literature spanning fundamental fluid physics to chip-scale engineering applications. We highlight some of this literature to provide the reader with a historical basis, routes for more detailed study, and an impression of the field's future directions.

Iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles, in ferrofluids or as magnetic microspheres, offer magnetic maneuverability, biochemical surface functionalization, and magnetic relaxation under the influence of an alternating field. The use of these properties for clinical applications requires an understanding of particles, forces, and scalar transport at various length scales. This review explains the behavior of magnetic nano- and microparticles during magnetic drug targeting and magnetic fluid hyperthermia, and the microfluidic transport of these particles in bioMEMS (biomedical microelectromechanical systems) devices for ex vivo therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Magnetic particle transport, the momentum interaction of these particles with a host fluid in a flow, and thermal transport in a particle-infused tissue are characterized through the governing electrodynamic, hydrodynamic, and scalar transport equations.

We present an overview of the aerodynamics of heavy vehicles, such as tractor-trailers, high-speed trains, and buses. We introduce three-dimensional flow structures around simplified model vehicles and heavy vehicles and discuss the flow-control devices used for drag reduction. Finally, we suggest important unsteady flow structures to investigate for the enhancement of aerodynamic performance and future directions for experimental and numerical approaches.

Shock wave/boundary layer interactions occur in a wide range of supersonic internal and external flows, and often these interactions are associated with turbulent boundary layer separation. The resulting separated flow is associated with large-scale, low-frequency unsteadiness whose cause has been the subject of much attention and debate. In particular, some researchers have concluded that the source of low-frequency motions is in the upstream boundary layer, whereas others have argued for a downstream instability as the driving mechanism. Owing to substantial recent activity, we are close to developing a comprehensive understanding, albeit only in simplified flow configurations. A plausible model is that the interaction responds as a dynamical system that is forced by external disturbances. The low-frequency dynamics seem to be adequately described by a recently proposed shear layer entrainment-recharge mechanism. Upstream boundary layer fluctuations seem to be an important source of disturbances, but the evidence suggests that their impact is reduced with increasing size of the separated flow.

The objective of this article is to review some developments in the use of adjoint equations in hydrodynamic stability theory. Adjoint-based sensitivity analysis finds both analytical and numerical applications much beyond those originally imagined. It can be used to identify optimal perturbations, pinpoint the most receptive path to break down, select the most destabilizing base-flow defect in a nominally stable configuration, and map the structural sensitivity of an oscillator. We focus on two flow cases more closely: the noise-amplifying instability of a boundary layer and the global mode occurring in the wake of a cylinder. For both cases, the clever interpretation and use of direct and adjoint modes provide key insight into the process of the transition to turbulence.