The role of non-uniqueness in the development of vortex breakdown in tubes

Numerical solutions of viscous, swirling flows through circular pipes of constant radius and circular pipes with throats have been obtained. Solutions were computed for several values of vortex circulation, Reynolds number and throat/inlet area ratio, under the assumptions of steady flow, rotational symmetry and frictionless flow at the pipe wall. When the Reynolds number is sufficiently large, vortex breakdown occurs abruptly with increased circulation as a result of the existence of non-unique solutions. Solution paths for Reynolds numbers exceeding approximately 1000 are characterized by an ensemble of three inviscid flow types: columnar (for pipes of constant radius), soliton and wavetrain. Flows that are quasi-cylindrical and which do not exhibit vortex breakdown exist below a critical circulation, dependent on the Reynolds number and the throat/inlet area ratio. Wavetrain solutions are observed over a small range of circulation below the critical circulation, while above the critical value, wave solutions with large regions of reversed flow are found that are primarily solitary in nature. The quasi-cylindrical (QC) equations first fail near the critical value, in support of Hall's theory of vortex breakdown (1967). However, the QC equations are not found to be effective in predicting the spatial position of the breakdown structure

Supercritical transition to turbulence in an inertially-driven von Karman closed flow

We study the transition from laminar flow to fully developed turbulence for an inertially-driven von Karman flow between two counter-rotating large impellers fitted with curved blades over a wide range of Reynolds number (100 - 1 000 000). The transition is driven by the destabilisation of the azimuthal shear-layer, i.e., Kelvin-Helmholtz instability which exhibits travelling/drifting waves, modulated travelling waves and chaos below the emergence of a turbulent spectrum. A local quantity -the energy of the velocity fluctuations at a given point- and a global quantity -the applied torque- are used to monitor the dynamics. The local quantity defines a critical Reynolds number Rec for the onset of time-dependence in the flow, and an upper threshold/crossover Ret for the saturation of the energy cascade. The dimensionless drag coefficient, i.e., the turbulent dissipation, reaches a plateau above this finite Ret, as expected for a "Kolmogorov"-like turbulence for Re -> infinity. Our observations suggest that the transition to turbulence in this closed flow is globally supercritical: the energy of the velocity fluctuations can be considered as an order parameter characterizing the dynamics from the first laminar time-dependence up to the fully developed turbulence. Spectral analysis in temporal domain moreover reveals that almost all of the fluctuations energy is stored in time-scales one or two orders of magnitude slower than the time-scale based on impeller frequency

Reduced order modeling of fluid flows: Machine learning, Kolmogorov barrier, closure modeling, and partitioning

In this paper, we put forth a long short-term memory (LSTM) nudging framework for the enhancement of reduced order models (ROMs) of fluid flows utilizing noisy measurements. We build on the fact that in a realistic application, there are uncertainties in initial conditions, boundary conditions, model parameters, and/or field measurements. Moreover, conventional nonlinear ROMs based on Galerkin projection (GROMs) suffer from imperfection and solution instabilities due to the modal truncation, especially for advection-dominated flows with slow decay in the Kolmogorov width. In the presented LSTM-Nudge approach, we fuse forecasts from a combination of imperfect GROM and uncertain state estimates, with sparse Eulerian sensor measurements to provide more reliable predictions in a dynamical data assimilation framework. We illustrate the idea with the viscous Burgers problem, as a benchmark test bed with quadratic nonlinearity and Laplacian dissipation. We investigate the effects of measurements noise and state estimate uncertainty on the performance of the LSTM-Nudge behavior. We also demonstrate that it can sufficiently handle different levels of temporal and spatial measurement sparsity. This first step in our assessment of the proposed model shows that the LSTM nudging could represent a viable realtime predictive tool in emerging digital twin systems

A Near-Wall Reynolds-Stress Closure without Wall Normals

With the aid of near-wall asymptotic analysis and results of direct numerical simulation, a new near-wall Reynolds stress model (NNWRS) is formulated based on the SSG high-Reynolds-stress model with wall-independent near-wall corrections. Only one damping function is used for flows with a wide range of Reynolds numbers to ensure that the near-wall modifications diminish away from the walls. The model is able to reproduce complicated flow phenomena induced by complex geometry, such as flow recirculation, reattachment and boundary-layer redevelopment in backward-facing step flow and secondary flow in three-dimensional square duct flow. In simple flows, including fully developed channel/pipe flow, Couette flow and boundary-layer flow, the wall effects are dominant, and the NNWRS model predicts less degree of turbulent anisotropy in the near-wall region compared with a wall-dependent near-wall Reynolds Stress model (NWRS) developed by So and colleagues. The comparison of the predictions given by the two models rectifies the misconception that the overshooting of skin friction coefficient in backward-facing step flow prevalent in those near-wall, models with wall normal is caused by he use of wall normal

Flow pattern transition accompanied with sudden growth of flow resistance in two-dimensional curvilinear viscoelastic flows

We find three types of steady solutions and remarkable flow pattern transitions between them in a two-dimensional wavy-walled channel for low to moderate Reynolds (Re) and Weissenberg (Wi) numbers using direct numerical simulations with spectral element method. The solutions are called "convective", "transition", and "elastic" in ascending order of Wi. In the convective region in the Re-Wi parameter space, the convective effect and the pressure gradient balance on average. As Wi increases, the elastic effect becomes suddenly comparable and the first transition sets in. Through the transition, a separation vortex disappears and a jet flow induced close to the wall by the viscoelasticity moves into the bulk; The viscous drag significantly drops and the elastic wall friction rises sharply. This transition is caused by an elastic force in the streamwise direction due to the competition of the convective and elastic effects. In the transition region, the convective and elastic effects balance. When the elastic effect dominates the convective effect, the second transition occurs but it is relatively moderate. The second one seems to be governed by so-called Weissenberg effect. These transitions are not sensitive to driving forces. By the scaling analysis, it is shown that the stress component is proportional to the Reynolds number on the boundary of the first transition in the Re-Wi space. This scaling coincides well with the numerical result.Comment: 33pages, 23figures, submitted to Physical Review