6,301 research outputs found
Weakly nonlinear subcritical instability of visco-elastic Poiseuille flow
It is well known that the Poiseuille flow of a visco-elastic polymer fluid
between plates or through a tube is linearly stable in the zero Reynolds number
limit, although the stability is weak for large Weissenberg numbers. In this
paper we argue that recent experimental and theoretical work on the instability
of visco-elastic fluids in Taylor-Couette cells and numerical work on channel
flows suggest a scenario in which Poiseuille flow of visco-elastic polymer
fluids exhibits a nonlinear "subcritical" instability due to normal stress
effects, with a threshold which decreases for increasing Weissenberg number.
This proposal is confirmed by an explicit weakly nonlinear stability analysis
for Poiseuille flow of an UCM fluid. Our analysis yields explicit predictions
for the critical amplitude of velocity perturbations beyond which the flow is
nonlinearly unstable, and for the wavelength of the mode whose critical
amplitude is smallest. The nonlinear instability sets in quite abruptly at
Weissenberg numbers around 4 in the planar case and about 5.2 in the
cylindrical case, so that for Weissenberg numbers somewhat larger than these
values perturbations of the order of a few percent in the wall shear stress
suffice to make the flow unstable. We have suggested elsewhere that this
nonlinear instability could be an important intrinsic route to melt fracture
and that preliminary experiments are both qualitatively and quantitatively in
good agreement with these predictions.Comment: 20 pages, 16 figures. Accepted for publication in J. of Non-Newtonian
Fluid Mechanic
Molecular Motors Interacting with Their Own Tracks
Dynamics of molecular motors that move along linear lattices and interact
with them via reversible destruction of specific lattice bonds is investigated
theoretically by analyzing exactly solvable discrete-state ``burnt-bridge''
models. Molecular motors are viewed as diffusing particles that can
asymmetrically break or rebuild periodically distributed weak links when
passing over them. Our explicit calculations of dynamic properties show that
coupling the transport of the unbiased molecular motor with the bridge-burning
mechanism leads to a directed motion that lowers fluctuations and produces a
dynamic transition in the limit of low concentration of weak links. Interaction
between the backward biased molecular motor and the bridge-burning mechanism
yields a complex dynamic behavior. For the reversible dissociation the backward
motion of the molecular motor is slowed down. There is a change in the
direction of the molecular motor's motion for some range of parameters. The
molecular motor also experiences non-monotonic fluctuations due to the action
of two opposing mechanisms: the reduced activity after the burned sites and
locking of large fluctuations. Large spatial fluctuations are observed when two
mechanisms are comparable. The properties of the molecular motor are different
for the irreversible burning of bridges where the velocity and fluctuations are
suppressed for some concentration range, and the dynamic transition is also
observed. Dynamics of the system is discussed in terms of the effective driving
forces and transitions between different diffusional regimes
Dualities in persistent (co)homology
We consider sequences of absolute and relative homology and cohomology groups
that arise naturally for a filtered cell complex. We establish algebraic
relationships between their persistence modules, and show that they contain
equivalent information. We explain how one can use the existing algorithm for
persistent homology to process any of the four modules, and relate it to a
recently introduced persistent cohomology algorithm. We present experimental
evidence for the practical efficiency of the latter algorithm.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, submitted to the Inverse Problems special issue
on Topological Data Analysi
Phase behaviour of block copolymer melts with arbitrary architecture
The Leibler theory [L. Leibler, Macromolecules, v.13, 1602 (1980)] for
microphase separation in AB block copolymer melts is generalized for systems
with arbitrary topology of molecules. A diagrammatic technique for calculation
of the monomeric correlation functions is developed. The free energies of
various mesophases are calculated within the second-harmonic approximation.
Model highly-branched tree-like structures are considered as an example and
their phase diagrams are obtained. The topology of molecules is found to
influence the spinodal temperature and asymmetry of the phase diagrams, but not
the types of phases and their order. We suggest that all model AB
block-copolymer systems will exhibit the typical phase behaviour.Comment: Submitted to J. Chem. Phys., see also
http://rugmd4.chem.rug.nl/~morozov/research.htm
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