14,953 research outputs found
Nonmodal energy growth and optimal perturbations in compressible plane Couette flow
Nonmodal transient growth studies and estimation of optimal perturbations
have been made for the compressible plane Couette flow with three-dimensional
disturbances. The maximum amplification of perturbation energy over time,
, is found to increase with increasing Reynolds number ,
but decreases with increasing Mach number . More specifically, the optimal
energy amplification (the supremum of over both the
streamwise and spanwise wavenumbers) is maximum in the incompressible limit and
decreases monotonically as increases. The corresponding optimal streamwise
wavenumber, , is non-zero at M=0, increases with increasing
, reaching a maximum for some value of and then decreases, eventually
becoming zero at high Mach numbers. While the pure streamwise vortices are the
optimal patterns at high Mach numbers, the modulated streamwise vortices are
the optimal patterns for low-to-moderate values of the Mach number. Unlike in
incompressible shear flows, the streamwise-independent modes in the present
flow do not follow the scaling law , the reasons
for which are shown to be tied to the dominance of some terms in the linear
stability operator. Based on a detailed nonmodal energy analysis, we show that
the transient energy growth occurs due to the transfer of energy from the mean
flow to perturbations via an inviscid {\it algebraic} instability. The decrease
of transient growth with increasing Mach number is also shown to be tied to the
decrease in the energy transferred from the mean flow () in
the same limit
Meso-scale turbulence in living fluids
Turbulence is ubiquitous, from oceanic currents to small-scale biological and
quantum systems. Self-sustained turbulent motion in microbial suspensions
presents an intriguing example of collective dynamical behavior amongst the
simplest forms of life, and is important for fluid mixing and molecular
transport on the microscale. The mathematical characterization of turbulence
phenomena in active non-equilibrium fluids proves even more difficult than for
conventional liquids or gases. It is not known which features of turbulent
phases in living matter are universal or system-specific, or which
generalizations of the Navier-Stokes equations are able to describe them
adequately. Here, we combine experiments, particle simulations, and continuum
theory to identify the statistical properties of self-sustained meso-scale
turbulence in active systems. To study how dimensionality and boundary
conditions affect collective bacterial dynamics, we measured energy spectra and
structure functions in dense Bacillus subtilis suspensions in quasi-2D and 3D
geometries. Our experimental results for the bacterial flow statistics agree
well with predictions from a minimal model for self-propelled rods, suggesting
that at high concentrations the collective motion of the bacteria is dominated
by short-range interactions. To provide a basis for future theoretical studies,
we propose a minimal continuum model for incompressible bacterial flow. A
detailed numerical analysis of the 2D case shows that this theory can reproduce
many of the experimentally observed features of self-sustained active
turbulence.Comment: accepted PNAS version, 6 pages, click doi for Supplementary
Informatio
Cooperative surmounting of bottlenecks
The physics of activated escape of objects out of a metastable state plays a
key role in diverse scientific areas involving chemical kinetics, diffusion and
dislocation motion in solids, nucleation, electrical transport, motion of flux
lines superconductors, charge density waves, and transport processes of
macromolecules, to name but a few. The underlying activated processes present
the multidimensional extension of the Kramers problem of a single Brownian
particle. In comparison to the latter case, however, the dynamics ensuing from
the interactions of many coupled units can lead to intriguing novel phenomena
that are not present when only a single degree of freedom is involved. In this
review we report on a variety of such phenomena that are exhibited by systems
consisting of chains of interacting units in the presence of potential
barriers.
In the first part we consider recent developments in the case of a
deterministic dynamics driving cooperative escape processes of coupled
nonlinear units out of metastable states. The ability of chains of coupled
units to undergo spontaneous conformational transitions can lead to a
self-organised escape. The mechanism at work is that the energies of the units
become re-arranged, while keeping the total energy conserved, in forming
localised energy modes that in turn trigger the cooperative escape. We present
scenarios of significantly enhanced noise-free escape rates if compared to the
noise-assisted case.
The second part deals with the collective directed transport of systems of
interacting particles overcoming energetic barriers in periodic potential
landscapes. Escape processes in both time-homogeneous and time-dependent driven
systems are considered for the emergence of directed motion. It is shown that
ballistic channels immersed in the associated high-dimensional phase space are
the source for the directed long-range transport
Modelling supported driving as an optimal control cycle: Framework and model characteristics
Driver assistance systems support drivers in operating vehicles in a safe,
comfortable and efficient way, and thus may induce changes in traffic flow
characteristics. This paper puts forward a receding horizon control framework
to model driver assistance and cooperative systems. The accelerations of
automated vehicles are controlled to optimise a cost function, assuming other
vehicles driving at stationary conditions over a prediction horizon. The
flexibility of the framework is demonstrated with controller design of Adaptive
Cruise Control (ACC) and Cooperative ACC (C-ACC) systems. The proposed ACC and
C-ACC model characteristics are investigated analytically, with focus on
equilibrium solutions and stability properties. The proposed ACC model produces
plausible human car-following behaviour and is unconditionally locally stable.
By careful tuning of parameters, the ACC model generates similar stability
characteristics as human driver models. The proposed C-ACC model results in
convective downstream and absolute string instability, but not convective
upstream string instability observed in human-driven traffic and in the ACC
model. The control framework and analytical results provide insights into the
influences of ACC and C-ACC systems on traffic flow operations.Comment: Submitted to Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologie
Superfluidity of Dirac Fermions in a Tunable Honeycomb Lattice: Cooper Pairing, Collective Modes, and Critical Currents
Motivated by recent experiments on atomic Dirac fermions in a tunable
honeycomb optical lattice, we study the attractive Hubbard model of
superfluidity in the anisotropic honeycomb lattice. At weak-coupling, we find
that the maximum mean field pairing transition temperature, as a function of
density and interaction strength, occurs for the case with isotropic hopping
amplitudes. In this isotropic case, we go beyond mean field theory and study
collective fluctuations, treating both pairing and density fluctuations for
interaction strengths ranging from weak to strong coupling. We find evidence
for a sharp sound mode, together with a well-defined Leggett mode over a wide
region of the phase diagram. We also calculate the superfluid order parameter
and collective modes in the presence of nonzero superfluid flow. The
flow-induced softening of these collective modes leads to dynamical
instabilities involving stripe-like density modulations as well as a
Leggett-mode instability associated with the natural sublattice symmetry
breaking charge-ordered state on the honeycomb lattice. The latter provides a
non-trivial test for the experimental realization of the one-band Hubbard
model. We delineate regimes of the phase diagram where the critical current is
limited by depairing or by such collective instabilities, and discuss
experimental implications of our results.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures. v3: published versio
Phoretic self-propulsion at finite P\'eclet numbers
Phoretic self-propulsion is a unique example of force- and torque-free motion
on small scales. The classical framework describing the flow field around a
particle swimming by self-diffusiophoresis neglects the advection of the solute
field by the flow and assumes that the chemical interaction layer is thin
compared to the particle size. In this paper we quantify and characterize the
effect of solute advection on the phoretic swimming of a sphere. We first
rigorously derive the regime of validity of the thin-interaction layer
assumption at finite values of the P\'eclet number (Pe). Within this
assumption, we solve computationally the flow around Janus phoretic particles
and examine the impact of solute advection on propulsion and the flow created
by the particle. We demonstrate that although advection always leads to a
decrease of the swimming speed and flow stresslet at high values of the
P\'eclet number, an increase can be obtained at intermediate values of Pe. This
possible enhancement of swimming depends critically on the nature of the
chemical interactions between the solute and the surface. We then derive an
asymptotic analysis of the problem at small Pe allowing to rationalize our
computational results. Our computational and theoretical analysis is
accompanied by a parallel study of the role of reactive effects at the surface
of the particle on swimming (Damk\"ohler number).Comment: 27 pages, 15 figures, to appear in J. Fluid Mec
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