John Soundar Jerome

Unifying Impacts in Granular Matter from Quicksand to Cornstarch

A sharp transition between liquefaction and transient solidification is observed during impact on a granular suspension depending on the initial packing fraction. We demonstrate, via high-speed pressure measurements and a two-phase modeling, that this transition is controlled by a coupling between the granular pile dilatancy and the interstitial fluid pressure generated by the impact. Our results provide a generic mechanism for explaining the wide variety of impact responses in particulate media, from dry quicksand in powders to impact hardening in shear-thickening suspensions like cornstarch.

Vortices catapult droplets in atomization

A droplet ejection mechanism in planar two-phase mixing layers is examined. Any disturbance on the gas-liquid interface grows into a Kelvin-Helmholtz wave, and the wave crest forms a thin liquid film that flaps as the wave grows downstream. Increasing the gas speed, it is observed that the film breaks up into droplets which are eventually thrown into the gas stream at large angles. In a flow where most of the momentum is in the horizontal direction, it is surprising to observe these large ejection angles. Our experiments and simulations show that a recirculation region grows downstream of the wave and leads to vortex shedding similar to the wake of a backward-facing step. The ejection mechanism results from the interaction between the liquid film and the vortex shedding sequence: a recirculation zone appears in the wake of the wave and a liquid film emerges from the wave crest; the recirculation region detaches into a vortex and the gas flow over the wave momentarily reattaches due to the departure of the vortex; this reattached flow pushes the liquid film down; by now, a new recirculation vortex is being created in the wake of the wave—just where the liquid film is now located; the liquid film is blown up from below by the newly formed recirculation vortex in a manner similar to a bag-breakup event; the resulting droplets are catapulted by the recirculation vortex.

Drag measurements in laterally confined 2D canopies: reconfiguration and sheltering effect

Plants in aquatic canopies deform when subjected to a water flow and so, unlike a rigid bluff body, the resulting drag force FD grows sub-quadratically with the flow velocity U. In this article, the effect of density on the canopy reconfiguration and the corresponding drag reduction is experimentally investigated for simple 2D synthetic canopies in an inclinable, narrow water channel. The drag acting on the canopy, and also on individual sheets, is systematically measured via two independent techniques. Simultaneous drag and reconfiguration measurements demonstrate that data for different Reynolds numbers (400–2200), irrespective of sheet width (w) and canopy spacing (l), collapse on a unique curve given by a bending beam model which relates the reconfiguration number and a properly rescaled Cauchy number. Strikingly, the measured Vogel exponent V and hence the drag reduction via reconfiguration is found to be independent of the spacing between sheets and the lateral confinement; only the drag coefficien...

Transient growth in Rayleigh-Bénard-Poiseuille/Couette convection

An investigation of the effect of a destabilizing cross-stream temperature gradient on the transient growth phenomenon of plane Poiseuille flow and plane Couette flow is presented. Only the streamwise-uniform and nearly streamwise-uniform disturbances are highly influenced by the Rayleigh number Ra and Prandtl number Pr. The maximum optimal transient growth Gmax of streamwise-uniform disturbances increases slowly with increasing Ra and decreasing Pr. For all Ra and Pr, at moderately large Reynolds numbers Re, the supremum of Gmax is always attained for streamwise-uniform perturbations (or nearly streamwise-uniform perturbations, in the case of plane Couette flow) which produce large streamwise streaks and Rayleigh-Benard convection rolls (RB). The optimal growth curves retain the same large-Reynolds-number scaling as in pure shear flow. A 3D vector model of the governing equations demonstrates that the short-time behavior is governed by the classical lift-up mechanism and that the influence of Ra on this ...

Extended Squire’s transformation and its consequences for transient growth in a confined shear flow

The classical Squire transformation is extended to the entire eigenfunction structure of both Orr-Sommerfeld and Squire modes. For arbitrary Reynolds numbers Re, this transformation allows the solution of the initial-value problem for an arbitrary three-dimensional (3D) disturbance via a two-dimensional (2D) initial-value problem at a smaller Reynolds number Re2D. Its implications for the transient growth of arbitrary 3D disturbances is studied. Using the Squire transformation, the general solution of the initial-value problem is shown to predict large-Reynolds-number scaling for the optimal gain at all optimization times t with t/Re finite or large. This result is an extension of the well-known scaling laws first obtained by Gustavsson (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 224, 1991, pp. 241-260) and Reddy & Henningson (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 252, 1993, pp. 209-238) for arbitrary \alpha Re, where \alpha is the streamwise wavenumber. The Squire transformation is also extended to the adjoint problem and, hence, the adjoint Orr-Sommerfeld and Squire modes. It is, thus, demonstrated that the long-time optimal growth of 3D perturbations as given by the exponential growth (or decay) of the leading eigenmode times an extra gain representing its receptivity, may be decomposed as a product of the gains arising from purely 2D mechanisms and an analytical contribution representing 3D growth mechanisms equal to 1+(\beta Re/Re2D)2G, where \beta is the spanwise wavenumber and G is a known expression. For example, when the leading eigenmode is an Orr-Sommerfeld mode, it is given by the product of respective gains from the 2D Orr mechanism and an analytical expression representing the 3D lift-up mechanism. Whereas if the leading eigenmode is a Squire mode, the extra gain is shown to be solely due to the 3D lift-up mechanism.