Complementary variational formulations are developed for the scattering of a gravity wave by a circular dock. These formulations, which are based on assumed distributions of the radial velocity and the potential, respectively, on the projection of the cylindrical boundary, yield lower and upper bounds to an impedance parameter that determines the difference between the scattered wave for the dock and the corresponding wave for a circular cylinder. Numerical results, using trial functions based on the incident wave, are compared with the results implied by a Galerkin solution (Garrett 1971). The maximum errors in the variational approximations to the total scattering cross-section are found to be of the order of 2% for a typical depth/radius ratio, draft/depth ratios of 0, ½ and 1, and all wavelengths. The axisymmetric component of the scattering cross-section is found to be very close to the value for scattering by a circular cylinder (dock extending to bottom). The intensity of the scattered wave on the forward axis for long wavelengths and a certain range of the geometric parameters is significantly less than that for a circular cylinder, and may vanish for critical combinations of these parameters.

We experimentally investigate the extensional flow of a sheet – or curtain – of viscoelastic liquid falling freely from a slot at constant flow rate under gravity. Extruded liquids are aqueous solutions of flexible polyethylene oxide (PEO) and of semi-rigid partially hydrolysed polyacrylamide (HPAM) with low shear viscosities. Velocimetry measurements reveal that the mean velocity field $U(z)$ (where $z$ is the distance from the slot exit) does not reduce to a free fall. More precisely, we show that the liquid falls initially with sub-gravitational accelerations up to a distance from the slot which scales as $g\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{fil}^{2}$ (where $g$ is gravity and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{fil}$ is the extensional relaxation time of the liquid) due to the stretching of polymer molecules. Beyond this elastic length, inertia dominates and the local acceleration reaches the asymptotic free-fall value $g$. The length of the sub-gravitational part of the curtain is shown to be much larger than the equivalent viscous length $((4\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C})^{2}/g)^{1/3}$ for Newtonian liquids of density $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}$ and dynamic viscosity $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}$ which is usually small compared to the curtain length. By analogy with Newtonian curtains, we show that the velocity field $U(z)$ rescales on a master curve. Besides, the flow is shown to be only weakly affected by the history of polymer deformations in the die upstream of the curtain. Furthermore, investigations on the curtain stability reveal that polymer addition reduces the minimum flow rate required to maintain a continuous sheet of liquid.

Motions of fluid particles advected by a vortex soliton are studied. In a reference frame which moves with the vortex soliton, particle motions are confined in a torus near the loop part of the vortex soliton for a wide range of three parameters that characterize the shape and strength of the vortex soliton. The transported volume is calculated numerically as a function of these parameters. The product of the volume and the translational velocity of the soliton provides the rate of transport. Using this quantity, the optimized shape of the soliton for the maximum rate of transport is considered. The torus is composed of groups of invariant surfaces around periodic trajectories. Similar phenomena are observed with the KAM tori for non-integrable Hamiltonian systems. To extract the essential mechanism of the transport properties, an ordinary differential equation model is proposed, which is named the ‘chopsticks model’. This model successfully explains the qualitative features of the transport.

In this paper, solutions of free, barotropic waves around axisymmetric seamounts are derived. Even though this type of oscillation has been studied before, we revisit this problem for two main reasons: (i) the linear, barotropic, shallow-water equations with a rigid lid are now solved with no further approximations, in contrast with previous studies; (ii) the solutions are applied to a wide family of seamounts with profiles proportional to exp(rs), with r being the radial distance from the centre of the mountain and s any positive real number. (Most previous works are restricted to the special case s = 2.) The resulting dispersion relation possesses a remarkable simplicity that reveals a number of wave characteristics, for instance, the discrete wave frequencies and the angular phase speed of the waves around the seamount are easily derived as a function of the seamount shape. By varying the shape parameter one can study trapped waves around flat-topped seamounts or guyots (s > 2) or sharp, cone-shaped topographies (s < 2).

Laminar-film flow with condensation or evaporation on a vertical fluted cylinder is examined. A kinematic wave equation describing the evolution of the film profile is obtained and solutions presented. The film profile evolves owing to axial, gravity-driven flow and transverse, surface-tension-driven flow from the crests to the valleys of the fluted cylinder. In the case of condensation the majority of the film reaches a uniform thickness and consequently there is a significant improvement in heat transfer compared with the classical unfluted result where the film thickens in an unbounded fashion. For evaporation a critical value of a parameter which involves the ratio of the Weber number and the gradient of the surface curvature is found below which the film totally drys out and above which the fluid funnels into tapering rivulets and only partially drys out. Typical dry-out lines are presented. For short cylinders the evaporative mass transfer for a fluted cylinder is slightly greater than that predicted for an unfluted case. However, when the cylinder is long the mass transfer is far less for a fluted cylinder owing to the reduction in film area associated with partial film dry out.

The Lorentz reciprocal theorem is generalized and applied to the study of the quasisteady motion of a concentric spherical (CS) compound drop at zero Reynolds number. Using this result, the migration velocities of a force-free CS compound drop placed in a general ambient Stokes flow, as well as the forces on each drop when subjected to specified migration velocities, are calculated. The latter constitutes a generalization of Faxén's law to the case of a CS compound drop. Also some earlier results on the thermocapillary migration of such drops (Borhan et al. 1992) are rederived more simply and in greater generality.

An inverse potential methodology is introduced for the solution of the fully 3-D target pressure problem. The method is based on a potential function/stream function formulation, where the physical space is mapped onto a computational one via a body-fitted coordinate transformation. A potential function and two stream vectors are used as the independent natural coordinates, whilst the velocity magnitude, the aspect ratio and the skew angle of the elementary streamtube cross-section are assumed to be the dependent ones. A novel procedure based on differential geometry and generalized tensor analysis arguments is employed to formulate the method. The governing differential equations are derived by requiring the curvature tensor of the flat 3-D physical Eucledian space, expressed in terms of the curvilinear natural coordinates, to be zero. The resulting equations are discussed and investigated with particular emphasis on the existence and uniqueness of their solution. The general 3-D inverse potential problem, with ‘target pressure’ boundary conditions only, seems to be illposed accepting multiple solutions. This multiplicity is alleviated by considering elementary streamtubes with orthogonal cross-sections. The assumption of orthogonal stream surfaces reduces the number of dependent variables by one, simplifying the governing equations to an elliptic p.d.e. for the velocity magnitude and to a second-order o.d.e. for the streamtube aspect ratio. The solution of these two equations provides the flow field. Geometry is determined independently by integrating Frenet equations along the natural coordinate lines, after the flow field has been calculated. The numerical implementation as well as validation test cases for the proposed inverse methodology are presented in the companion paper (Paper 2).

The fluid dynamic behaviour of a reactive chemical in a stream can be greatly influenced by the presence of sorbing suspended particles. In this case, a kinetically controlled mass transfer is established between sorbed and dissolved phases and complex interactions emerge between fluid dynamical transport processes, sorption–desorption kinetics and chemical reactions. These conditions often occur in rivers, where both suspended sediment and reactive substances are frequently present. This paper deals with the important case in which the chemical reactions are nonlinear decay phenomena that often affect chemical or biological substances. A vertical two-dimensional mathematical model is formulated to take into account advection, turbulent diffusion, particle sedimentation, exchange kinetics between sorbed and dissolved phases, and decay. The decay is modelled for the case in which two different nonlinear decay reactions affect the dissolved and sorbed phases. The main result of the work is to obtain analytically a one-dimensional differential model of the vertically averaged concentration of the dissolved phase, this being conceptually similar to the classical advection–dispersion–decay equation. However, in this case we include the effects of (i) the kinetics with the phase sorbed by suspended particles and (ii) the influence of the two different decay processes. For this purpose, the multiple-scale method of homogenization is applied to the two-dimensional model. The resultant one-dimensional differential model shows how suspended load and decay phenomena affect the pollutant transport mechanisms to a great extent in a non-intuitive way and that the links are nonlinear. Some quantitative results show that these influences are, in general, not negligible.

We report on the dynamics of circular finite-release Boussinesq gravity currents on a uniform slope. The study comprises a series of highly resolved direct numerical simulations for a range of slope angles between $5^{\circ }$ and $20^{\circ }$. The simulations were fixed at Reynolds number $Re=5000$ for all slopes considered. The temporal evolution of the front is compared to available experimental data. One of the interesting aspects of this study is the detection of a converging flow towards the centre of the gravity current. This converging flow is a result of the finite volume of the release coupled with the presence of a sloping boundary, which results in a second acceleration phase in the front velocity of the current. The details of the dynamics of this second acceleration and the redistribution of material in the current leading to its development will be discussed. These finite-release currents are invariably dominated by the head where most of the mixing and ambient entrainment occurs. We propose a simple method for defining the head of the current from which we extract various properties including the front Froude number and entrainment coefficient. The Froude number is seen to increase with steeper slopes, whereas the entrainment coefficient is observed to be weakly dependent on the bottom slope.

Convection from an isolated heat source in a chamber has been previously studied numerically, experimentally and analytically. These have not covered long time spans for wide ranges of Rayleigh number Ra and Prandtl number Pr. Numerical calculations of constant viscosity convection partially fill the gap in the ranges $\mathit{Ra}= 1{0}^{3} {{\unicode{x2013}}}1{0}^{6} $ and $\mathit{Pr}= 1, 10, 100, 1000$ and $\infty $. Calculations begin with cold fluid everywhere and localized hot temperature at the centre of the bottom of a square two-dimensional chamber. For $\mathit{Ra}\gt 20\hspace{0.167em} 000$, temperature increases above the hot bottom and forms a rising plume head. The head has small internal recirculation and minor outward conduction of heat during ascent. The head approaches the top, flattens, splits and the two remnants are swept to the sidewalls and diffused away. The maximum velocity and the top centre heat flux climb to maxima during head ascent and then adjust toward constant values. Two steady cells are separated by a vertical thermal conduit. This sequence is followed for every value of $Pr$ number, although lower Pr convection lags in time. For $\mathit{Ra}\lt 20\hspace{0.167em} 000$ there is no plume head, and no streamfunction and heat flux maxima with time. For sufficiently large Ra and all values of Pr, an oscillation develops at roughly $t= 0. 2$, with the two cells alternately strengthening and weakening. This changes to a steady flow with two unequal cells that at roughly $t= 0. 5$ develops a second oscillation.

We present experiments and theory for viscous fingering of a suspension of non-colloidal particles undergoing radial flow in a Hele-Shaw cell. As the suspension displaces air, shear-induced migration causes particles to move faster than the average suspension velocity and to accumulate on the suspension–air interface. The resultant particle accumulation generates a pattern in which low-concentration, low-viscosity suspension displaces high-concentration, high-viscosity suspension and is unstable due to the classic Saffman–Taylor instability mechanism. While the destabilising mechanism is well-understood, what remains unknown is the stabilising mechanism that suppresses fine fingers characteristic of miscible fingering. In this work, we demonstrate how the stable suspension–air interface interacts with the unstable miscible interface to set the critical wavelength. We present a linear stability analysis for the time-dependent radial flow and show that the wavenumber predicted by the analysis is in good agreement with parametric experiments investigating the effect of suspension concentration and gap thickness of the Hele-Shaw cell.