Convective instability and transient growth in steady and pulsatile stenotic flows

We show that suitable initial disturbances to steady or long-period pulsatile flows in a straight tube with an axisymmetric 75%-occlusion stenosis can produce very large transient energy growths. The global optimal disturbances to an initially axisymmetric state found by linear analyses are three-dimensional wave packets that produce localized sinuous convective instability in extended shear layers. In pulsatile flow, initial conditions that trigger the largest disturbances are either initiated at, or advect to, the separating shear layer at the stenosis in phase with peak systolic flow. Movies are available with the online version of the paper

Triple-deck and direct numerical simulation analyses high-speed subsonic flows past a roughness element

This paper is concerned with the boundary-layer separation in subsonic and transonic flows caused by a two-dimensional isolated wall roughness. The process of the separation is analysed by means of two approaches: the direct numerical simulation (DNS) of the flow using the Navier–Stokes equations, and the numerical solution of the triple-deck equations. Since the triple-deck theory relies on the assumption that the Reynolds number ($\mathit{Re}$) is large, we performed the Navier–Stokes calculations at $\mathit{Re}=4\times 10^{5}$ based on the distance of the roughness element from the leading edge of the flat plate. This $\mathit{Re}$ is also relevant for aeronautical applications. Two sets of calculation were conducted with the free-stream Mach number $\mathit{Ma}_{\infty }=0.5$ and $\mathit{Ma}_{\infty }=0.87$. We used different roughness element heights, some of which were large enough to cause a well-developed separation region behind the roughness. We found that the two approaches generally compare well with one another in terms of wall shear stress, longitudinal pressure gradient and detachment/reattachment points of the separation bubbles (when present). The main differences were found in proximity to the centre of the roughness element, where the wall shear stress and longitudinal pressure gradient predicted by the triple-deck theory are noticeably different from those predicted by DNS. In addition, DNS predicts slightly longer separation regions.</jats:p

Convective instability and transient growth in flow over a backward-facing step

Transient energy growths of two- and three-dimensional optimal linear perturbations to two-dimensional flow in a rectangular backward-facing-step geometry with expansion ratio two are presented. Reynolds numbers based on the step height and peak inflow speed are considered in the range 0–500, which is below the value for the onset of three-dimensional asymptotic instability. As is well known, the flow has a strong local convective instability, and the maximum linear transient energy growth values computed here are of order 80×103 at Re = 500. The critical Reynolds number below which there is no growth over any time interval is determined to be Re = 57.7 in the two-dimensional case. The centroidal location of the energy distribution for maximum transient growth is typically downstream of all the stagnation/reattachment points of the steady base flow. Sub-optimal transient modes are also computed and discussed. A direct study of weakly nonlinear effects demonstrates that nonlinearity is stablizing at Re = 500. The optimal three-dimensional disturbances have spanwise wavelength of order ten step heights. Though they have slightly larger growths than two-dimensional cases, they are broadly similar in character. When the inflow of the full nonlinear system is perturbed with white noise, narrowband random velocity perturbations are observed in the downstream channel at locations corresponding to maximum linear transient growth. The centre frequency of this response matches that computed from the streamwise wavelength and mean advection speed of the predicted optimal disturbance. Linkage between the response of the driven flow and the optimal disturbance is further demonstrated by a partition of response energy into velocity components