Experimental measurements are presented showing the effects of streamline convergence on developing turbulent boundary layers. The longitudinal pressure-gradient in these experiments is nominally zero so the only extra rate-of-strain is the lateral convergence. Measurements have been made of mean flow and turbulence quantities at two different Reynolds numbers. The results show that convergence leads to a significant reduction in the skin-friction and an increase in the boundary layer thickness. There are also large changes in the Reynolds stresses with reductions occurring in the inner region and some increase in the outer flow. This is in contrast to the results of Saddoughi & Joubert (1991) for a diverging flow of the same included angle and zero pressure-gradient which show much smaller changes in the stresses and an approach to equilibrium. A new non-dimensional parameter, βD, is proposed to characterize the local effect of the convergence and it is shown how this parameter is related to Clauser's pressure-gradient parameter, βx. It is suggested that this is an equilibrium parameter for turbulent boundary layers with lateral straining. In the present flow case βD increases rapidly with streamwise distance leading to a significant departure from equilibrium. Measurement of terms in the transport equations suggest that streamline convergence leads to a reduction in production and generation and large increases in mean advection. The recovery of the flow after the removal of convergence has been shown to be characterized by a significant increase in the turbulent transport of shear-stress and turbulent kinetic energy from the very near-wall region to the flow further out where the stresses have been depleted by convergence.

The effects of fluid inertia on the pressure drop required to drive fluid flow through periodic and random arrays of aligned cylinders is investigated. Numerical simulations using a lattice-Boltzmann formulation are performed for Reynolds numbers up to about 180.

The magnitude of the drag per unit length on cylinders in a square array at moderate Reynolds number is strongly dependent on the orientation of the drag (or pressure gradient) with respect to the axes of the array; this contrasts with Stokes flow through a square array, which is characterized by an isotropic permeability. Transitions to time-oscillatory and chaotically varying flows are observed at critical Reynolds numbers that depend on the orientation of the pressure gradient and the volume fraction.

In the limit Re[Lt ]1, the mean drag per unit length, F, in both periodic and random arrays, is given by F/(μU) =k1+k2Re2, where μ is the fluid viscosity, U is the mean velocity in the bed, and k1 and k2 are functions of the solid volume fraction ϕ. Theoretical analyses based on point-particle and lubrication approximations are used to determine these coefficients in the limits of small and large concentration, respectively.

In random arrays, the drag makes a transition from a quadratic to a linear Re-dependence at Reynolds numbers of between 2 and 5. Thus, the empirical Ergun formula, F/(μU) =c1+c2Re, is applicable for Re>5. We determine the constants c1 and c2 over a wide range of ϕ. The relative importance of inertia becomes smaller as the volume fraction approaches close packing, because the largest contribution to the dissipation in this limit comes from the viscous lubrication flow in the small gaps between the cylinders.

A simultaneous three-directional laser absorption technique for the study of a shock-induced Richtmyer–Meshkov instability mixing zone is reported. It is an improvement of a CO2 laser absorption technique, using three detectors during the same run, through three different directions of the test section, for the simultaneous thickness measurement of the mixing zone near the corner, near the wall and at the centre of a square-cross-section shock tube. The three-dimensional mean front and rear shapes of the mixing zone, its thickness and volume are deduced from the experimental measurements. The cases when the shock wave passes from a heavy gas to a light one, from one gas to another of similar densities and from a light gas to a heavy one, are investigated before and after the mixing zone compression by the reflected shock, for different incident shock wave Mach numbers. It is shown that the mixing zone is strongly deformed by the wall boundary layer when it becomes turbulent. Consequently, the thickness of the mixing zone is not constant along the shock tube cross-section, and the measurement of the mean volume of the mixing zone appears to be more appropriate than its mean thickness at the centre of the shock tube. The influence of the incident shock wave Mach number is also studied. When the Atwood number tends to zero, we observe a limit-like regime and the thickness, or the volume, of the mixing zone no longer varies with the incident shock wave Mach number. Furthermore, a series of experiments undertaken with an Atwood number close to zero enabled us to define a membrane-induced minimum mixing thickness, L0, depending on the initial configuration of the experiments. From the experimental data, a hypothesis about the mixing zone thickness evolution law with time is deduced on the basis of L0. The results are found to follow two very different laws depending on whether they are considered before or after the establishment of the plenary turbulent regime. However, no general trend can be determined to describe the entire phenomenon, i.e. from the initial conditions until the turbulent stage.

Non-stationary oblique shock wave reflections for fluids in the dense gas regime are examined for selected cases. A time-accurate predictor-corrector TVD scheme with reflective boundary conditions for solving the Euler equations simulates the evolution of a wave field for an inviscid van der Waals gas near the thermodynamic critical point. The simulated cases involve shock tube flows with compressive wedges and circular arcs. Non-classical phenomena, such as disintegrating shocks, expansion shocks, composite waves, etc., demonstrate significant differences from perfect gas flow fields over similar geometries. Detailed displays of wave field structures and thermodynamic states for the dense gas flow fields are presented and analysed.

A two-dimensional Boussinesq model of the thermohaline convection in a rectangular domain is forced at the top by a prescribed temperature and a prescribed salinity flux. The two forcings have opposite effects on the density field, which leads to the formation of fronts and multiple equilibria. Numerical results are interpreted through a comparison with the solutions of an asymptotic equation, derived in the limit of a shallow basin by Cessi & Young (1992). In order to explain the discrepancies between the numerical and the asymptotic solutions, we extend this asymptotic approach through a geometrical representation and a topological classification of the surface forcings. By comparing three forcings, we propose a global picture which gives clues to interpret the numerical solutions.

The β-assumed-p.d.f. approximation of Cook & Riley (1994) is tested as a subgrid model for the LES computation of non-premixed turbulent reacting flows, in the limit of infinitely fast chemistry, for two plane constant-density turbulent mixing layers with different degrees of intermittency. Excellent results are obtained in the computation of plane-averaged properties, such as product mass fractions and relatively high powers of the temperature, and even of the p.d.f. of the conserved scalar itself. In all these cases the errors are small enough to be useful in practical applications. The analysis is extended to slightly out-of-equilibrium problems, such as the generation of radicals, and formulated in terms of the p.d.f. of the gradient of the mixture fraction. It is shown that the form of the conditional gradient distribution is universal in a wide range of cases, whose limits are established. Within those limits, engineering approximations to the radical concentration are also possible. It is argued that the experiments in this paper are already in the limit of high Reynolds numbers.

We present and discuss new shallow-water equations that model the long-time effects of slowly varying bottom topography and weak hydrostatic imbalance on the vertically averaged horizontal velocity of an incompressible fluid possessing a free surface and moving under the force of gravity. We consider the regime where the Froude number ε is much smaller than the aspect ratio δ of the shallow domain. The new equations are obtained from the ε→0 limit of the Euler equations (the rigid-lid approximation) at the first order of an asymptotic expansion in δ2. These equations possess local conservation laws of energy and vorticity which reflect exact layer mean conservation laws of the three-dimensional Euler equations. In addition, they convect potential vorticity and have a Hamilton's principle formulation. We contrast them with the Green–Naghdi equations.

Turbulent premixed flame propagation in the vicinity of a wall is studied using a three-dimensional constant-density simulation of flames propagating in a channel. The influence of the walls is investigated in terms of the flamelet approach, where flamelet speed and flame surface density transport are used to describe the flame. The walls have constant temperature and lead to flamelet quenching for sufficiently small wall–flame distances. Starting from the exact evolution equation for the surface density of propagating interfaces (Trouvé & Poinsot 1994; Candel & Poinsot 1990; Pope 1988), a budget for the flame surface density equation is presented before, during, and after the interaction with the wall. Before the flame interacts with the wall, flame propagation is controlled by a balance between surface production and annihilation. During the interaction, high flame surface density gradients near the wall are responsible for the predominance of the transport terms. Closures of all terms of the flame surface density equation are proposed. These models are based on flamelet ideas and take into account wall effects. Enthalpy loss through the wall affects flamelet speed, flamelet annihilation and flame propagation. Decrease of turbulent scales near the wall affects turbulent diffusion and flame strain. This model is compared to DNS results using two types of tests: (i) a priori tests, where individual terms of the modelled flame surface density equation are compared to the terms of the exact interface density propagation equation, calculated with the DNS; (ii) a posteriori tests, where the final model is used to obtain total reaction rate, mean fuel mass fraction, heat flux at the wall and fuel mass fraction at the wall in the configuration used in the DNS. For both types of tests the model compares well with the DNS results.

Two types of capillary–gravity interfacial solitary waves are computed numerically: ‘classical’ solitary waves which bifurcate from a uniform flow at a critical value of the velocity and solitary waves in the form of wave packets which bifurcate from a train of infinitesimal periodic waves with equal phase and group velocities. The effects of finite amplitude are shown to be quite different from the pure gravity case for the classical solitary waves. The solitary waves in the form of wave packets, which are known to exist for small density ratios, are shown to exist even for larger density ratios, but only at finite amplitude. The numerical code is based on an integro-differential formulation of the full Euler equations. The experimental results of Koop & Butler (1981), which have been compared earlier with results from model equations, are compared with the present numerical results.

Velocity measurements using hot wires are performed across a high-Reynolds-number turbulent plane wake, with the aim of studying the subgrid-scale (SGS) stress and its modelling. This quantity is needed to close the filtered Navier–Stokes equations used for large-eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent flows. Comparisons of various globally time-averaged quantities involving the measured and modelled SGS stress are made, with special emphasis on the SGS energy dissipation rate. Experimental constraints require the analysis of a one-dimensional surrogate of the SGS dissipation. Broadly, the globally averaged results show that all models considered, namely the Smagorinsky and similarity models, as well as the dynamic Smagorinsky model, approximately reproduce profiles of the surrogate SGS dissipation. Some discrepancies near the outer edge of the wake are observed, where the Smagorinsky model slightly overpredicts, and the similarity model underpredicts, energy dissipation unless the filtering scale is about two orders of magnitude smaller than the integral length scale.

A more detailed comparison between real and modelled SGS stresses is achieved by conditional averaging based on particular physical phenomena: (i) the outer intermittency of the wake, and (ii) large-scale coherent structures of the turbulent wake. Thus, the interaction of the subgrid scales with the resolved flow and model viability can be individually tested in regions where isolated mechanisms such as outer intermittency, vortex stretching, rotation, etc., are dominant. Conditioning on outer intermittency did not help to clarify observed features of the measurements. On the other hand, the large-scale organized structures are found to have a strong impact upon the distribution of surrogate SGS energy dissipation, even at filter scales well inside the inertial range. The similarity model is able to capture this result, while the Smagorinsky model gives a more uniform (i.e. unrealistic) distribution. Both dynamic Smagorinsky and similarity models reproduce realistic distributions, but only if all filter levels are contained well inside the inertial range.

For flood protection against storm tides, barriers of box-like gates hinged along a bottom axis have been designed to span the three inlets of the Venice Lagoon. While on calm days the gates are ballasted to rest horizontally on the seabed, in stormy weather they are raised by buoyancy to act as a dam which is expected to swing to and fro in unison in response to the normally incident sea waves. Previous laboratory experiments with sinusoidal waves have revealed however that neighbouring gates oscillate out of phase, at one half the wave frequency, in a variety of ways, and hence would reduce the effectiveness of the barrier. Extending the linear theory of trapped waves by Mei et al. (1994), we present here a nonlinear theory for subharmonic resonance of mobile gates allowed to oscillate about a vertical plane of symmetry. In this part (1) the evolution equation of the Landau–Stuart type is first derived for the gate amplitude. The effects of gate geometries on the coefficients in the equation are examined. After accounting for dissipation effects semi-empirically the theoretical results on the equilibrium amplitude excited by uniform incident waves are compared with laboratory experiments.

In order to examine the effects of finite bandwidth of the incident sea spectrum on the resonance of the articulated storm gates for Venice Lagoon, we consider a narrow band consisting of the carrier frequency and two sidebands. The evolution equation for the gate oscillations now has a time-periodic coefficient, and is equivalent to a non-autonomous dynamical system. For small damping and weak forcing, approximate analysis for local and global bifurcations are carried out, and extended by direct numerical simulation. Typical bifurcation scenarios are also examined by laboratory experiments.

Short relatively deep tidal basins, which are connected to the open sea by a narrow strait, may exhibit either an amplified (resonant), or damped (choked) response to the tide at the entrance. Here particular attention is given to the lowest mode of response, which is the Helmholtz or pumping mode, for which the sea level within the basin executes a spatially uniform oscillation. When the basin's sidewalls slope, the restoring process of this oscillator is nonlinear. Possible consequences of this nonlinearity are that the basin may exhibit either long-lasting high-waters and short, peaked low-waters or long-term regular modulation of its tidal amplitude, or a chaotic modulation of its tidal amplitude, or ‘bent resonance horns’, implying that resonant and choked tidal responses may exist simultaneously for the same parameter regime. Related field observations will be discussed.