Perturbed Free Shear Layers

This is a personal statement on the present state of understanding of coherent structures, in particular their spatial details and dynamical significance. The characteristic measures of coherent structures are discussed, emphasizing coherent vorticity as the crucial property. We present here a general scheme for educing structures in any transitional or fully turbulent flow. From smoothed vorticity maps in convenient flow planes, this scheme recognizes patterns of the same mode and parameter size, and then phase-aligns and ensemble-averages them to obtain coherent structure measures. The departure of individual realizations from the ensemble average denotes incoherent turbulence. This robust scheme has been used to educe structures from velocity data using a rake of hot wires as well as direct numerical simulations and can educe structures using newer measurement techniques such as digital image processing. Our recent studies of coherent structures in several free shear flows are briefly reviewed. Detailed data in circular and elliptic jets, mixing layers, and a plane wake reveal that incoherent turbulence is produced at the ‘saddles’ and then advected to the ‘centres’ of the structures. The mechanism of production of turbulence in shear layers is the stretching of longitudinal vortices or ‘ribs’ which connect the predominantly spanwise ‘rolls’; the ribs induce spanwise contortions of rolls and cause mixing and dissipation, mostly at points where they connect with rolls. We also briefly discuss the role of coherent structures in aerodynamic noise generation and argue that the structure breakdown process, rather than vortex pairing, is the dominant mechanism of noise generation. The ‘cut-and-connect’ interaction of coherent structures is proposed as a specific mechanism of aerodynamic noise generation, and a simple analytical model of it shows that it can provide acceptable predictions of jet noise. The coherent-structures approach to turbulence, apart from explaining flow physics, has also enabled turbulence management via control of structure evolution and interactions. We also discuss some new ideas under investigation: in particular, helicity as a characteristic property of coherent structures.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022112086001192

Coherent structures and turbulence.

Dispersion and nonlinearity play a fundamental role in wave motions in nature. The nonlinear shallow water equations that neglect dispersion altogether lead to breaking phenomena of the typical hyperbolic kind with the development of a vertical profile. In particular, the linear dispersive term in the Korteweg–de Vries equation prevents this from ever happening in its solution. In general, breaking can be prevented by including dispersive effects in the shallow water theory. The nonlinear theory provides some insight into the question of how nonlinearity affects dispersive wave motions. Another interesting feature is the instability and subsequent modulation of an initially uniform wave profile.

Solitons and the Inverse Scattering Transform

In the present study, it is shown that the spreading rate of a mixing layer can be greatly manipulated at very low forcing level if the mixing layer is perturbed near a subharmonic of the most-amplified frequency. The subharmonic forcing technique is able to make several vortices merge simultaneously and hence increases the spreading rate dramatically. A new mechanism, ‘collective interaction’, was found which can bypass the sequential stages of vortex merging and make a large number of vortices (ten or more) coalesce.A deeper physical insight into the evolution of the coherent structures is revealed through the investigation of a forced mixing layer. The stability and the forcing function play important roles in determining the initial formation of the vortices. The subharmonic starts to amplify at the location where the phase speed of the subharmonic matches that of the fundamental. The position where vortices are seen to align vertically coincides with the position where the measured subharmonic reaches its peak. This location is defined as the merging location, and it can be determined from the feedback equation (Ho & Nosseir 1981).The spreading rate and the velocity profiles of the forced mixing layer are distinctly different from the unforced case. The data show that the initial condition has a longlasting effect on the development of the mixing layer.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022112082001438

Subharmonics and vortex merging in mixing layers

Preface to the Third Edition.- Preface.- Linear Partial Differential Equations.- Nonlinear Model Equations and Variational Principles.- First-Order, Quasi-Linear Equations and Method of Characteristics.- First-Order Nonlinear Equations and Their Applications.- Conservation Laws and Shock Waves.- Kinematic Waves and Real-World Nonlinear Problems.- Nonlinear Dispersive Waves and Whitham's Equations.- Nonlinear Diffusion-Reaction Phenomena.- Solitons and the Inverse Scattering Transform.- The Nonlinear Schroedinger Equation and Solitary Waves.- Nonlinear Klein--Gordon and Sine-Gordon Equations.- Asymptotic Methods and Nonlinear Evolution Equations.- Tables of Integral Transforms.- Answers and Hints to Selected Exercises.- Bibliography.- Index.

Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations for Scientists and Engineers

A new experimental technique is described for the study of the interactions between the large-scale vortical features in the two-dimensional mixing layer. Detector probes above and below the mixing layer are used to monitor the large-scale structure. Conditional sampling is performed in a moderate Reynolds number developing flow, by using phase and amplitude information from these detector probes. It is shown that significant Reynolds-stress production is associated with the pairing interaction in which two vortical structures combine to form a single, larger vortical structure.

Large scales in the developing mixing layer

Experiments on the interaction between solitary shallow-water waves propagating in the same direction have been performed in a rectangular channel. Two methods were devised to compensate for the dissipation of the waves in order to compare results with Hirota's (1971) solution for the collision of solitons described by the Korteweg-de Vries equation. Both qualitative and quantitative agreement with theory is obtained using the proposed corrections for wave damping.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022112078000713

Experiments on strong interactions between solitary waves

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022112076002851

On the spin-up and spin-down of a rotating fluid. Part 2. Measurements and stability

Experiments on the resonant energy transfer between internal gravity-wave solitons travelling along neighbouring pycnoclines have been performed. Measurements of both amplitude and phase oscillations are found to be in qualitative agreement with theoretical predictions given in the companion paper by Liu, Pereira & KO (1982). Using averaged quantities to account approximately for wave-energy dissipation, the theoretical expression correlating the oscillation frequency with the density environ- ment parameters is reasonably well verified. A new three-soliton resonance requiring both upstream and downstream energy transfer has also been observed.

Experiments on leapfrogging internal solitary waves

The mode shapes for internal solitary waves propagating in a linearly stratified fluid of finite depth are determined in the limit of weak stratification. The solutions obtained for both a fixed upper boundary and a free surface are compared with known results for exponential stratification. The profound changes which occur depending on whether the upper surface is fixed or free are derived from the strong influence of the free surface when the stratification is weak. Evidence is presented supporting the conjecture that the free surface can no longer effect qualitative differences in the modal structure when the fluid is heavily stratified.

Patrick D. Weidman

Papers

Large scales in the developing mixing layer

Experiments on strong interactions between solitary waves

On the spin-up and spin-down of a rotating fluid. Part 2. Measurements and stability

Experiments on leapfrogging internal solitary waves

Internal solitary waves in a linearly stratified fluid