Helical modes in boundary layer transition

Observations are presented to show that in an adverse pressure gradient boundary layer, beneath free-stream turbulence, the interaction between Klebanoff streaks and naturally arising instability waves leads to helical disturbances which break down to form turbulent spots. This occurs under low to moderate levels, 1%–2%, of free-stream turbulence. At high levels of free-stream turbulence, conventional bypass mechanisms are seen. The helical structures are clearly identifiable in visualizations of isosurfaces of streamwise perturbation velocity. A direct numerical simulation also was performed in zero pressure gradient, with a time-periodic Tollmien-Schlichting wave eigenfunction at the inlet. Again, under a moderate level of free-stream turbulence, helices were observed, and found to trigger transition. Their wave speed is on the order of 12U∞, so helical breakdown can be viewed as a type of inner mode, secondary instability

Mixed mode transition in boundary layers: Helical instability

Recent (Bose \& Durbin, \textit{Phys. Rev. Fluids}, 1, 073602, 2016) direct numerical simulations (DNS) of adverse- and zero-pressure-gradient boundary layers beneath moderate levels of free stream turbulence ($Tu$ $\le 2\%$) revealed a \textit{mixed mode} transition regime, intermediate between orderly and bypass routes. In this regime, the amplitudes of the Klebanoff streaks and instability waves are similar, and potentially can interact. Three-dimensional visualizations of transitional eddies revealed a helical pattern, quite distinct from the sinuous and varicose forms seen in pure bypass transition. This raises the fundamental question of whether the helical pattern could be attributed to a previously unknown instability mode. Two-dimensional stability analyses are performed herein for base flows extracted from DNS flow fields. The three-dimensional structure of the eigenfunction of the most unstable mode indeed reveals a helical pattern. These instability modes are obtained significantly earlier than helical structures are seen in flow visualizations, even for innocuous base flow structures. It is inferred that the instability mode is the underlying cause of helical patterns that emerge in the transition region. The streak configuration leading to the formation of the helical mode instability is different from those leading to sinuous and varicose modes in previous studies of pure bypass transition. Thus, the mixed mode precursor is the distinctive cause

Instability waves and transition in adverse-pressure-gradient boundary layers

Transition to turbulence in incompressible adverse-pressure-gradient (APG) boundary layers is investigated by direct numerical simulations. Purely two-dimensional instability waves develop on the inflectional base velocity profile. When the boundary layer is perturbed by isotropic turbulence from the free stream, streamwise elongated streaks form and may interact with the instability waves. Subsequent mechanisms that trigger transition depend on the intensity of the free-stream disturbances. All evidence from the present simulations suggest that the growth rate of instability waves is sufficiently high to couple with the streaks. Under very low levels of free-stream turbulence (∼0.1%), transition onset is highly sensitive to the inlet disturbance spectrum and is accelerated if the spectrum contains frequency–wave-number combinations that are commensurate with the instability waves. Transition onset and completion in this regime is characterized by formation and breakdown of Λ vortices, but they are more sporadic than in natural transition. Beneath free-stream turbulence with higher intensity (1–2%), bypass transition mechanisms are dominant, but instability waves are still the most dominant disturbances in wall-normal and spanwise perturbation spectra. Most of the breakdowns were by disturbances with critical layers close to the wall, corresponding to inner modes. On the other hand, the propensity of an outer mode to occur increases with the free-stream turbulence level. Higher intensity free-stream disturbances induce strong streaks that favorably distort the boundary layer and suppress the growth of instability waves. But the upward displacement of high amplitude streaks brings them to the outer edge of the boundary layer and exposes them to ambient turbulence. Consequently, high-amplitude streaks exhibit an outer-mode secondary instability

Designing End-of-life Recyclable Polymers via Diels-Alder Chemistry:A Review on the Kinetics of Reversible Reactions

The purpose of this review is to critically assess the kinetic behaviour of the furan/maleimide Diels-Alder click reaction. The popularity of this reaction is evident and still continues to grow, which is likely attributed to its reversibility at temperatures above 100°C, and due to its bio-based "roots" in terms of raw materials. This chemistry has been used to form thermo-reversible crosslinks in polymer networks, and thus allows the polymer field to design strong, but also end-of-life recyclable thermosets and rubbers. In this context, the rate at which the forward reaction (Diels-Alder for crosslinking) and its reverse (retro Diels-Alder for de-crosslinking) proceed as function of temperature is of crucial importance in assessing the feasibility of the design in real-life products. Differences in kinetics based from various studies are not well understood, but are potentially caused by chemical side groups, mass transfer limitations, and on the analysis methods being employed. In this work we attempt to place all the relevant studies in perspective with respect to each other, and thereby offer a general guide on how to assess their recycling kinetics. This review sheds light on the kinetics on the furan/maleimide Diels-Alder reaction. This popular reaction opens up a path to develop end-of-life recyclable polymer networks with self-healing properties. The factors affecting reaction kinetics are discussed, and the importance of accurate reaction kinetics in the context of polymer reprocessing is highlighted. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

DADIT: A Dataset for Demographic Classification of Italian Twitter Users and a Comparison of Prediction Methods

Social scientists increasingly use demographically stratified social media data to study the attitudes, beliefs, and behavior of the general public. To facilitate such analyses, we construct, validate, and release publicly the representative DADIT dataset of 30M tweets of 20k Italian Twitter users, along with their bios and profile pictures. We enrich the user data with high-quality labels for gender, age, and location. DADIT enables us to train and compare the performance of various state-of-the-art models for the prediction of the gender and age of social media users. In particular, we investigate if tweets contain valuable information for the task, since popular classifiers like M3 don't leverage them. Our best XLM-based classifier improves upon the commonly used competitor M3 by up to 53% F1. Especially for age prediction, classifiers profit from including tweets as features. We also confirm these findings on a German test set.Comment: Accepted to LREC-COLING 202

On Mobility Management in Multi-Sink Sensor Networks for Geocasting of Queries

In order to efficiently deal with location dependent messages in multi-sink wireless sensor networks (WSNs), it is key that the network informs sinks what geographical area is covered by which sink. The sinks are then able to efficiently route messages which are only valid in particular regions of the deployment. In our previous work (see the 5th and 6th cited documents), we proposed a combined coverage area reporting and geographical routing protocol for location dependent messages, for example, queries that are injected by sinks. In this paper, we study the case where we have static sinks and mobile sensor nodes in the network. To provide up-to-date coverage areas to sinks, we focus on handling node mobility in the network. We discuss what is a better method for updating the routing structure (i.e., routing trees and coverage areas) to handle mobility efficiently: periodic global updates initiated from sinks or local updates triggered by mobile sensors. Simulation results show that local updating perform very well in terms of query delivery ratio. Local updating has a better scalability to increasing network size. It is also more energy efficient than ourpreviously proposed approach, where global updating in networks have medium mobility rate and speed

Contribution of the Staphylococcus aureus Atl AM and GL murein hydrolase activities in cell division, autolysis, and biofilm formation.

The most prominent murein hydrolase of Staphylococcus aureus, AtlA, is a bifunctional enzyme that undergoes proteolytic cleavage to yield two catalytically active proteins, an amidase (AM) and a glucosaminidase (GL). Although the bifunctional nature of AtlA has long been recognized, most studies have focused on the combined functions of this protein in cell wall metabolism and biofilm development. In this study, we generated mutant derivatives of the clinical S. aureus isolate, UAMS-1, in which one or both of the AM and GL domains of AtlA have been deleted. Examination of these strains revealed that each mutant exhibited growth rates comparable to the parental strain, but showed clumping phenotypes and lysis profiles that were distinct from the parental strain and each other, suggesting distinct roles in cell wall metabolism. Given the known function of autolysis in the release of genomic DNA for use as a biofilm matrix molecule, we also tested the mutants in biofilm assays and found both AM and GL necessary for biofilm development. Furthermore, the use of enzymatically inactive point mutations revealed that both AM and GL must be catalytically active for S. aureus to form a biofilm. The results of this study provide insight into the relative contributions of AM and GL in S. aureus and demonstrate the contribution of Atl-mediated lysis in biofilm development