Viscous heating effects in fluids with temperature-dependent viscosity: triggering of secondary flows

Viscous heating can play an important role in the dynamics of fluids with strongly temperature-dependent viscosities because of the coupling between the energy and momentum equations. The heat generated by viscous friction produces a local temperature increase near the tube walls with a consequent decrease of the viscosity and a strong stratification in the viscosity profile. The problem of viscous heating in fluids was investigated and reviewed by Costa & Macedonio (2003) because of its important implications in the study of magma flows. Because of the strong coupling between viscosity and temperature, the temperature rise due to the viscous heating may trigger instabilities in the velocity field, which cannot be predicted by a simple isothermal Newtonian model. When viscous heating produces a pronounced peak in the temperature profile near the walls, a triggering of instabilities and a transition to secondary flows can occur because of the stratification in the viscosity profile. In this paper we focus on the thermal and mechanical effects caused by viscous heating. We will present the linear stability equations and we will show, as in certain regimes, these effects can trigger and sustain a particular class of secondary rotational flows which appear organised in coherent structures similar to roller vortices. This phenomenon can play a very important role in the dynamics of magma flows in conduits and lava flows in channels and, to our knowledge, it is the first time that it has been investigated by a direct numerical simulation.Comment: 18 pages manuscript, 10 figures, to be published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics (2005

Combinatorial formulation of Ising model revisited

In 1952, Kac and Ward developed a combinatorial formulation for the two dimensional Ising model which is another method of obtaining Onsager's formula for the free energy per site in the thermodynamic limit of the model. Feynman gave an important contribution to this formulation conjecturing a crucial mathematical relation which completed Kac and Ward ideas. In this paper, the method of Kac, Ward and Feynman for the free field Ising model in two dimensions is reviewed in a selfcontained way.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figure

Energy dissipation and equivalent damping of RC columns subjected to biaxial bending: an investigation based in experimental results

The cyclic behaviour of reinforced concrete columns have been object of many experimental studies in the recent past years. However, the experimental studies on the biaxial response of RC columns are still limited. In this paper are presented the main results of an experimental study of 24 full-scale rectangular building columns tested for different loading paths under uniaxial and biaxial conditions. The experimental results are presented and discussed in terms of global behaviour, particularly focusing on the stiffness and strength degradation due to the increasing cyclic demand, and energy dissipation evolution. The equivalent viscous damping was estimated based on the experimental results of the RC columns tested under biaxial loading and empirical expressions are proposed

Induced higher-derivative massive gravity on a 2-brane in 4D Minkowski space

In this paper we revisit the problem of localizing gravity in a 2-brane embedded in a 4D Minkowski space to address induction of high derivative massive gravity. We explore the structure of propagators to find well-behaved higher-derivative massive gravity induced on the brane. Exploring a special case in the generalized mass term of the graviton propagator we find a model of consistent higher order gravity with an additional unitary massive spin-2 particle and two massless particles: one spin-0 particle and one spin-1 particle. The condition for the absence of tachyons is satisfied for both `right' and `wrong' signs of the Einstein-Hilbert term on the 2-brane. We also find the Pauli-Fierz mass term added to the new massive gravity in three dimensions and recover the low dimensional DGP model.Comment: Latex, 12 pages, no figure; refs added, version to appear in PL