A one-dimensional global mode analysis is conducted for low-speed water jets emanating from a circular orifice in microgravity, in which the observed spontaneous convective instability causes almost periodic jet disintegrations at a fixed location for each jet-issue speed that exceeds a certain threshold. The inviscid spatial linear stability analysis identifies four wave modes excitable at the frequency: the Plateau–Rayleigh (PR) unstable wave, its complex conjugate and two neutral waves which may transfer energy upstream. Their linear combination satisfying the orifice exit condition may describe the synchronised reproduction of a PR unstable wave from each neutral wave at the orifice exit. On the other hand, a weakly nonlinear analysis shows that the growth of the nonlinear PR unstable wave produces the two neutral waves near the orifice. Thus, the same PR unstable wave can be reproduced on a newly issued liquid surface owing to the neutral waves produced by its own nonlinear growth. This self-destabilising loop, dominantly operating for the most unstable PR wave, determines the initial PR unstable wave amplitude and, consequently, the breakup length as a function of jet-issue speed. The predicted initial amplitude of the PR unstable wave is in reasonably good agreement with the value calculated from the average breakup length measured in our microgravity experiments. It is found that that the loop consists mainly of the downstream- and upstream-moving neutral waves at relatively high and low jet speeds, respectively. The stability of the self-destabilising loop is also discussed.

An experimental study of a magnetohydrodynamic flow in a system of n (n[les ]5) U-bends is presented. The bends are electrically coupled via common electrically conducting walls parallel to the external magnetic field. In the test section the fluid flows perpendicular–parallel–perpendicular to the magnetic field. The Hartmann number M varies in the range 6×102[les ]M[les ]2.4×103, and the interaction parameter N in the range 102[les ]N[les ]4.3×104. The experimental data for the wall electric potentials and the pressure have been compared with the theoretical asymptotic values calculated for N[Gt ]M3/2[Gt ]1. This assumption in theory ensures the inertialess nature of the flow. For n=1 the agreement between the theory and the experiment is good. With increasing number of bends quantitative (for n=3) and then qualitative (for n=5) disagreement appears. For the first time in strong-field magnetohydrodynamics this disagreement has been observed on the Hartmann walls, i.e. walls perpendicular to the field. The experimental results for the wall potential indicate that for n=5 in some of the ducts parallel to the field qualitatively different flow patterns are established than those predicted by the asymptotic inertialess theory. The flow in the core depends on N, i.e. is of inertial nature. In the whole range of N investigated there is only a slight tendency of the wall potential to approach theoretical values. This demonstrates the stability of the new flow pattern and that even such high values of N as 4.3×104 are insufficient for the core flow to be inertialess. A strong dependence of the pressure drop on N has been observed in all the flow configurations investigated. The dependence of the inertial part of the pressure drop in each bend scales with N−1/3, as long as N−1/3[Lt ]1. This is characteristic of electromagnetic–inertia interaction in the boundary and internal layers parallel to the field. A linear increase of the pressure drop with the number of coupled bends has been observed, confirming qualitatively previous theoretical results. The effects of magnetic field inclination and different flow distribution between bends have also been studied.

When traditional linearized theory is used to study gravity–capillary waves produced by flow past an obstruction, the geometry of the object is assumed to be small in one or several of its dimensions. In order to preserve the nonlinear nature of the obstruction, asymptotic expansions in the low-Froude-number or low-Bond-number limits can be derived, but here, the solutions are waveless to every order. This is because the waves are in fact, exponentially small, and thus beyond-all-orders of regular asymptotics; their formation is a consequence of the divergence of the asymptotic series and the associated Stokes Phenomenon. In Part 1 (Trinh & Chapman, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 724, 2013b, pp. 367–391), we showed how exponential asymptotics could be used to study the problem when the size of the obstruction is first linearized. In this paper, we extend the analysis to the nonlinear problem, thus allowing the full geometry to be considered at leading order. When applied to the classic problem of flow over a step, our analysis reveals the existence of six classes of gravity–capillary waves, two of which share a connection with the usual linearized solutions first discovered by Rayleigh. The new solutions arise due to the availability of multiple singularities in the geometry, coupled with the interplay of gravitational and cohesive effects.

An analysis is made of the sound generated by the time-dependent throttling of a nominally steady stream of air through a small orifice into a flow-through resonant cavity. This is exemplified by the production of voiced speech, where air from the lungs enters the vocal tract through the glottis at a time-variable volume flow rate Q(t) controlled by oscillations of the glottis cross-section. Voicing theory has hitherto determined Q from a heuristic, reduced complexity ‘Fant’ differential equation. A new self-consistent, integro-differential form of this equation is derived in this paper using the theory of aerodynamic sound, with full account taken of the back-reaction of the resonant tract on the glottal flux Q. The theory involves an aeroacoustic Green's function (G) for flow–surface interactions in a time-dependent glottis, so making the problem non-self-adjoint. In complex problems of this type, it is not usually possible to obtain G in an explicit analytic form. The principal objective of this paper is to show how the Fant equation can still be derived in such cases from a consideration of the equation of aerodynamic sound and from the adjoint of the equation governing G in the neighbourhood of the ‘throttle’. The theory is illustrated by application to the canonical problem of throttled flow into a Helmholtz resonator.

Buoyancy–thermocapillary convection in a layer of volatile liquid driven by a horizontal temperature gradient arises in a variety of situations. Recent studies have shown that the composition of the gas phase, which is typically a mixture of vapour and air, has a noticeable effect on the critical Marangoni number describing the onset of convection as well as on the observed convection pattern. Specifically, as the total pressure or, equivalently, the average concentration of air is decreased, the threshold of the instability leading to the emergence of convective rolls is found to increase rather significantly. We present a linear stability analysis of the problem which shows that this trend can be readily understood by considering the transport of heat and vapour through the gas phase. In particular, we show that transport in the gas phase has a noticeable effect even at atmospheric conditions, when phase change is greatly suppressed.

The free-surface flow past a semi-infinite horizontal plate in a finite-depth fluid is considered. It is assumed that the fluid is incompressible and inviscid and that the flow approaches a uniform shear flow downstream. Exact relations are derived using conservation of mass and momentum for the case where the downstream free surface is flat. The complete nonlinear problem is solved numerically using a boundary-integral method and these waveless solutions are shown to exist only when the height of the plate above the bottom is greater than the height of the uniform shear flow. Interesting results are found for various values of the constant vorticity. Solutions with downstream surface waves are also considered, and nonlinear results of this type are compared with linear results found previously. These solutions can be used to model the flow near the stern of a (two-dimensional) ship.

An approximate solution is devised for the one-dimensional motion following the impact of a shock wave on a wall which is free to move. The approximate solution neglects changes in entropy occurring through the reflected and transmitted shocks, thus reducing the problem to one of a simple wave type. The asymptotic behaviour of the system is considered and it is shown by exact physical argument that the transmitted shock eventually attains the same strength as the incident shock and that the reflected shock ultimately decays to a sound wave.

An experimental investigation of the interaction was made, using thin walls of cellulose acetate, in a shock tube at an incident shock Mach number of 1·50. Agreement between the theoretical and experimental results, especially for the path followed by the wall, was found to be good.

The stability with respect to initial condition perturbations of solitary travelling-wave solutions of the Euler equations for continuously, stably stratified, near two-layer fluids is examined numerically and analytically for a set of parameters of relevance for laboratory experiments. Numerical travelling-wave solutions of the Dubreil–Jacotin–Long equation are first obtained with a variant of Turkington, Eyland and Wang’s iterative code by testing convergence on the equation’s residual. In this way, stationary solutions with very thin pycnoclines (and small Richardson numbers) approaching the near two-layer configurations used in experiments can be obtained, allowing for a stability study free of non-stationary effects, introduced by lack of numerical resolution, which develop when these solutions are used as initial conditions in a time-dependent evolution code. The thin pycnoclines in this study permit analytical results to be derived from strongly nonlinear models and their predictions compared with carefully controlled numerical simulations. This brings forth shortcomings of simple criteria for shear instability manifestations based on parallel shear approximations due to subtle higher-order effects. In particular, evidence is provided that the fore–aft asymmetric growth observed in all simulations requires non-parallel shear analysis. Collectively, the results of this study reveal that while the wave-induced shear can locally reach unstable configurations and give rise to local convective instability, the global wave/self-generated shear system is in fact stable, even for extreme cases of thin pycnoclines and near-maximum-amplitude waves.

An error in the complex representation of the porous-coating model used in the study by Fedorov et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 479, 2003, pp. 99–124), investigating the stabilization effect of ultrasonically absorptive coatings on hypersonic boundary layers, is pointed out and corrected. This error has been acknowledged by Fedorov et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 769, 2015, pp. 725–728). The corrected version of the erroneous linear stability results of the original work is presented and previously made conclusions are reassessed. The novel numerical results indicate that second-mode instabilities are shifted to lower frequencies on felt-metal porous coatings, similar to the behaviour observed on porous coatings with regular microstructure.

Experiments with layers of salt and sugar solution separated by a diffusive interface are described. Interfacial waves were spontaneously generated by the convection once the system evolved to a critical value of the density-anomaly ratio Rρ≡βΔS/αΔT. The waves locally modulated the interfacial fluxes by modifying the interface thickness and thereby organized otherwise random convective motions into large-scale circulations. In turn, the waves themselves persisted for unusually long times owing to energy input from the organized convection. The dependence of the wave speed on the layer properties and channel dimensions was successfully predicted by assuming that coupling requires a matching of the wave and convection speeds, and that the system selects waves of an amplitude for which this resonance can occur. This ‘wave–convection coupling’ also appeared to increase the interfacial fluxes at low Rρ. The interaction of waves and convection may be important for oceanic thermohaline staircases and other systems where convection is driven by interfacial fluxes.

The hydrodynamic problem of a submerged horizontal cylinder advancing in regular water waves of finite depth at constant forward speed is analysed by the linearized velocity potential theory. The Green function is first derived. Far-field equations for calculating damping coefficients and exciting forces are obtained. The numerical method used combines a finite-element approximation of the potential in a region surrounding the cylinder with a boundary-integral-equation representation of the outer region. Numerical results for the hydrodynamic forces on submerged circular cylinders and elliptical cylinders are provided.

While non-Boussinesq hexagonal convection patterns are known to be stable close to threshold (i.e. for Rayleigh numbers $R \,{\approx}\, R_c$), it has often been assumed that they are always unstable to rolls for slightly higher Rayleigh numbers. Using the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations for parameters corresponding to water as the working fluid, we perform full numerical stability analyses of hexagons in the strongly nonlinear regime ($\epsilon\,{\equiv}\, (R-R_c)/R_c\,{=}\,{O}(1)$). We find ‘re-entrant’ behaviour of the hexagons, i.e. as $\epsilon$ is increased they can lose and regain stability. This can occur for values of $\epsilon$ as low as $\epsilon\,{=}\,0.2$. We identify two factors contributing to the re-entrance: (i) far above threshold there exists a hexagon attractor even in Boussinesq convection as has been shown recently and (ii) the non-Boussinesq effects increase with $\epsilon$. Using direct simulations for circular containers we show that the re-entrant hexagons can prevail even for sidewall conditions that favour convection in the form of competing stable rolls. For sufficiently strong non-Boussinesq effects hexagons even become stable over the whole $\epsilon$-range considered, $0 \,{\le}\, \epsilon \,{\le}\, 1.5$.