The linear stability of a basic forced and free convection flow in an inclined porous channel is analysed by using the Darcy law and the Oberbeck–Boussinesq approximation. The basic velocity and temperature distributions are influenced by the effect of viscous dissipation, as well as by the boundary conditions. The boundary planes are assumed to be impermeable and isothermal, with a temperature of the lower boundary higher than that of the upper boundary. The instability against longitudinal rolls is studied by employing a second-order weighted residual solution and an accurate sixth-order Runge–Kutta solution of the disturbance equations. The instability against transverse rolls is also investigated. It is shown that these disturbances are in every case less unstable than the longitudinal rolls.

This paper investigates the behaviour of a non-spherical cavitation bubble in an acoustic standing wave. The study has important applications to sonochemistry and in understanding features of therapeutic ultrasound in the megahertz range, extending our understanding of bubble behaviour in the highly nonlinear regime where jet and toroidal bubble formation may be important. The theory developed herein represents a further development of the material presented in Part 1 of this paper (Wang & Blake, J. Fluid Mech. vol. 659, 2010, pp. 191–224) to a standing wave, including repeated topological changes from a singly to a multiply connected bubble. The fluid mechanics is assumed to be compressible potential flow. Matched asymptotic expansions for an inner and outer flow are performed to second order in terms of a small parameter, the bubble-wall Mach number, leading to weakly compressible flow formulation of the problem. The method allows the development of a computational model for non-spherical bubbles by using a modified boundary-integral method. The computations show that the bubble remains approximately of a spherical shape when the acoustic pressure is small or is initiated at the node or antinode of the acoustic pressure field. When initiated between the node and antinode at higher acoustic pressures, the bubble loses its spherical shape at the end of the collapse phase after only a few oscillations. A high-speed liquid bubble jet forms and is directed towards the node, impacting the opposite bubble surface and penetrating through the bubble to form a toroidal bubble. The bubble first rebounds in a toroidal form but re-combines to a singly connected bubble, expanding continuously and gradually returning to a near spherical shape. These processes are repeated in the next oscillation.

We study the stability of a vortex in an axisymmetric density distribution. It is shown that a light-cored vortex can be unstable in spite of the ‘stable stratification’ of density. Using a model flow consisting of step jumps in vorticity and density, we show that a wave interaction mediated by shear is the mechanism for the instability. The requirement is for the density gradient to be placed outside the vortex core but within the critical radius of the Kelvin mode. Conversely, a heavy-cored vortex, found in other studies to be unstable in the centrifugal Rayleigh–Taylor sense, is stabilized when the density jump is placed in this region. Asymptotic solutions at small Atwood number At show growth rates scaling as At1/3 close to the critical radius, and At1/2 further away. By considering a family of vorticity and density profiles of progressively increasing smoothness, going from a step to a Gaussian, it is shown that sharp gradients are necessary for the instability of the light-cored vortex, consistent with recent work which found Gaussian profiles to be stable. For sharp gradients, it is argued that wave interaction can be supported due to the presence of quasi-modes. Probably for the first time, a quasi-mode which decays exponentially is shown to interact with a neutral wave to give exponential growth in the combined case. We finally study the nonlinear stages using viscous direct numerical simulations. The initial exponential instability of light-cored vortices is arrested due to a restoring centrifugal buoyancy force, leading to stable non-axisymmetric structures, such as a tripolar state for an azimuthal wavenumber of 2. The study is restricted to two dimensions, and neglects gravity.

We consider a spectral problem that describes the time-harmonic small-amplitude motion of the mechanical system that consists of a three-dimensional water layer of constant depth and a body (either surface-piercing or totally submerged), freely floating in it. This coupled boundary-value problem contains a spectral parameter – the frequency of oscillations – in the boundary conditions as well as in the equations governing the body motion. It is proved that the total energy of the water motion is finite and the equipartition of energy of the whole system is established. Under certain restrictions on body's geometry the problem is proved to have only a trivial solution for sufficiently large values of the frequency. The uniqueness frequencies are estimated from below.

The problem of waves propagating on the surface of a two-dimensional ideal fluid of infinite depth bounded above by an elastic sheet is studied with asymptotic and numerical methods. We use a nonlinear elastic model that has been used to describe the dynamics of ice sheets. Particular attention is paid to forced and unforced dynamics of waves having near-minimum phase speed. For the unforced problem, we find that wavepacket solitary waves bifurcate from nonlinear periodic waves of minimum speed. When the problem is forced by a moving load, we find that, for small-amplitude forcing, steady responses are possible at all subcritical speeds, but for larger loads there is a transcritical range of forcing speeds for which there are no steady solutions. In unsteady computations, we find that if the problem is forced at a speed in this range, very large unsteady responses are obtained, and that when the forcing is released, a solitary wave is generated. These solitary waves appear stable, and can coexist within a sea of small-amplitude waves.

We present the results of a combined experimental and theoretical investigation of the surface-tension-driven coalescence of flexible structures. Specifically, we consider the dynamics of the rise of a wetting liquid between flexible sheets that are clamped at their upper ends. As the elasticity of the sheets is progressively increased, we observe a systematic deviation from the classical diffusive-like behaviour: the time to reach equilibrium increases dramatically and the departure from classical rise occurs sooner, trends that we elucidate via scaling analyses. Three distinct temporal regimes are identified and subsequently explored by developing a theoretical model based on lubrication theory and the linear theory of plates. The resulting free-boundary problem is solved numerically and good agreement is obtained with experiments.

In an oceanographic setting, the shallow water equations are an asymptotic approximation to the full Euler equations, in the limit ϵ = h0/L → 0, with h0 being the vertical length scale and L a horizontal length scale associated with the fluid layer. However, in arriving at the shallow water equations an additional key step in the derivation is the condition that at some reference time (e.g. t = 0) the thin-layer horizontal vorticity field is identically zero, which corresponds to the horizontal fluid velocity field being independent of the vertical coordinate, z, at t = 0. With this condition in place, the ‘thin-layer equations’ reduce exactly to the shallow water equations. In this paper, we show that this exact condition may be unstable: small, even infinitesimal, perturbations of the thin-layer horizontal vorticity field can grow without bound. When the thin-layer horizontal vorticity grows to be of order 1, the shallow water equations are no longer asymptotically valid as a model for shallow water hydrodynamics, and the ‘thin-layer equations’ must be adopted in their place.

In Skews & Kleine (2010) the correct figure 2 with the corresponding caption should appear as follows. Figure 2.

Wall angles at which Mach reflection becomes evident for different radii surfaces and shock strengths. The solid curve is the sonic criterion for plane walls. Previous data are from Ben-Dor (2007).