An approximate method due originally to Whitham is applied to the study of acoustic waves propagating in a non-grey radiating and absorbing gas, assumed in local molecular equilibrium. The method, which has general applicability in the study of non-equilibrium wave phenomena, replaces the exact governing equation by a set of lower-order equations that can be solved analytically in many cases. The use of the method is demonstrated by reconsidering the onedimensional problems of (i) harmonic waves driven by a harmonic variation in either position or temperature of a planar wall and (ii) the discrete wave produced by the impulsive motion of a constant-temperature wall. The method greatly simplifies the mathematics for these problems, and comparaison of the results with those of earlier investigators shows the approximate method to be accurate. Moreover, the method allows us to obtain a more systematic and complete analytical solution of the second problem than has been obtained by more conventional methods.

The question of whether or not waves exist upstream of an obstacle that moves uniformly through an unbounded, incompressible, inviscid, unseparated, rotating flow is addressed by considering the development of the disturbed flow induced by a weak, moving dipole that is introduced into an axisymmetric, rotating flow that is initially undisturbed. Starting from the linearized equations of motion, it is shown that the flow tends asymptotically to the steady flow determined on the hypothesis of no upstream waves and that the transient at a fixed point is O(1/t). It also is shown that the axial velocity upstream (x < 0) of the dipole as x → − ∞ with t fixed is O(|x|−3), as in potential flow, but is O(|x|−1) as t → ∞ with |x| fixed. The results extend directly to closed obstacles of sufficiently small transverse dimensions and suggest the existence of a finite, parametric domain of no upstream waves for smooth, slender obstacles. The axial velocity in front of a small, moving sphere at a given instant in the transient régime is calculated and compared with Pritchard's laboratory measurements. The agreement is within the experimental scatter for Rossby numbers greater than about 0·3 even though the equivalence between sphere and dipole is exact only for infinite Rossby number.

Three-dimensional steady flow past a body placed in a uniform stream of viscous, thermally conducting fluid is considered within the framework of the Oseen approximation. Asymptotic forms for the fundamental matrix are obtained for both supersonic and subsonic flow. It is shown how the solution to the flow past a body may be obtained from the fundamental matrix, and that the fundamental matrix itself provides the far field flow.

The non-linear magnetization characteristics of recently developed ferrofluids complicate studies of wave dynamics and stability. A general formulation of the incompressible ferrohydrodynamics of a ferrofluid with non-linear magnetization characteristics is presented, which distinguishes clearly between effects of inhomogeneities in the fluid properties and saturation effects from non-uniform fields. The formulation makes it clear that, with uniform and non-uniform fields, the magnetic coupling with homogeneous fluids is confined to interfaces; hence, it is a convenient representation for surface interactions.

Detailed attention is given to waves and instabilities on a planar interface between ferrofluids stressed by an arbitrarily directed magnetic field. The close connexion with related work in electrohydrodynamics is cited, and the effect of the non-linear magnetization characteristics on oscillation frequencies and conditions for instability is emphasized. The effects of non-uniform fields are investigated using quasi-one-dimensional models for the imposed fields in which either a perpendicular or a tangential imposed field varies in a direction perpendicular to the interface. Three experiments are reported which support the theoretical models and emphasize the interfacial dynamics as well as the stabilizing effects of a tangential magnetic field. The resonance frequencies of ferrohydrodynamic surface waves are measured as a function of magnetization, with fields imposed first perpendicular, and second tangential, to the unperturbed interface. In a third experiment the second configuration is augmented by a gradient in the imposed magnetic field to demonstrate the stabilization of a ferrofluid surface supported against gravity over air; the ferromagnetic stabilization of a Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

Experiments have been made to investigate the motion generated by a body moving along the axis of a uniformly rotating fluid.

Part of the investigation concerns the motion generated in a cylinder whose radial dimensions are much greater than those of the body. Measurements have been made of the velocities of particles on the axis of rotation both ahead of and behind the body, and the results indicate that there is a significant axial motion generated by the body over a wide range of Rossby numbers. A measurement of the instantaneous velocity profile ahead of the body, determined as a function of the radius, agrees fairly well with a low Rossby number calculation of the flow due to a circular disk (Morgan 1951). In addition, the forward influence of the body has been measured as a function of the Rossby number and from these results it is suggested that the body has a finite influence far upstream at all Rossby numbers and that the blocking phenomenon first reported by Taylor (1922) probably occurs for all values of the Rossby number (UΩa) less than a critical value which is about 0·7.

Experiments have also been made in a long cylindrical tube which acts as a wave guide. At large distances from the body the separate effects of the various modes can be observed and hence it is possible to measure the flow corresponding to an individual wave-number: these measurements show that, as a result of the Doppler effect, the motion a large distance ahead of the body is different from that far behind (see Lighthill 1967). Moreover, the experiments indicate that no disturbances propagate ahead of the body when its velocity exceeds the maximum group velocity in the fluid, but that disturbances trail behind the body when its velocity is far in excess of the maximum group velocity. Measurements of the maximum group velocity are in good agreement with the theoretical value.

This paper presents the practical and rigorous solution of the potential flow problem associated with the oscillation of a shallow-draft cylinder of infinite length on a free surface. The problem is three-dimensional to the extent that the amplitude of the cylinder oscillation is periodic along its axis as well as with time. The complementary problem associated with the interaction of the fixed cylinder with an incident wave train aligned at some oblique angle with respect to the cylinder axis is also treated. The use of a Green's function reduces the problem to an integral equation which is solved numerically. Numerical results are computed for pressure amplitude distributions, force coefficients, added mass and damping coefficients, transmission and reflexion coefficients and wave height ratios.

A complete and detailed study of a radiatively driven plane acoustic wave in a non-grey radiating and absorbing gas is carried out on the assumption of local molecular equilibrium. Specifically, the response of the gas in a semi-infinite space to a step input of radiation from a stationary black wall is investigated. The problem is physically interesting because radiative heat addition is the only driving mechanism, and this mechanism is unique and fundamental to the field of radiative gas dynamics. The solution shows that the heat addition gives rise initially to a compression-expansion wave in the gas, with the wave front controlled by radiation. This wave-front disturbance, though caused initially by the direct effect of radiative transfer, eventually outruns the region of appreciable heating near the wall and becomes a modified-classical disturbance that propagates away from the wall at the isentropic speed of sound. The radiative heat addition continues directly to affect the gas near the wall and in this manner drives the modified-classical wave indirectly by causing the formation of an ‘effective gas piston’. The solution thus exhibits a linearized phenomenology corresponding to that observed in the non-linear leading wave associated with the nuclear fireball.

When a long rectangular tube containing two immiscible fluids is slightly tilted away from the horizontal, a uniformly accelerating flow is produced with shear at the interface. The presence of shear leads to instability, which is characterized by the spontaneous and rapid growth of almost stationary waves if the fluid depths are equal and the density difference small. The conditions for the onset of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, taking account of the accelerating flow and the presence of a velocity transition region at the interface, are investigated theoretically and comparison made with observations. The time at which instability occurs is quite well predicted by this theory, but the wavelength of the unstable waves is rather greater than predicted in the accelerating flow. The difference between the predictions and observations may be the result of finite amplitude effects or of the development of Tollmien-Schlichting instability before Kelvin-Helmholtz.

The flow produced by a disk performing small oscillations in a rotating system is considered. Results are obtained for the first-order harmonic velocity and the second-order steady velocity. It is then shown that this mathematical model does not always represent an axially bounded fluid in the limit of infinite separation, and to be general one must allow a steady, azimuthal, perturbation velocity with an arbitrary value to exist at infinity.

The low Reynolds number flow of a variable property gas past an infinite heated circular cylinder is studied when the temperature difference between the cylinder and the free stream is appreciable. The velocity field (and hence the drag on the cylinder) is calculated by the method of matched asymptotic expansions. It is found that the zero-order velocity field calculated on the Stokes approximation satisfies both the no slip condition at the cylinder and the uniform stream condition at infinity which is in strong contrast with the corresponding velocity field for incompressible slow flow past an unheated cylinder where the uniform stream condition at infinity cannot be satisfied. When the temperature of the cylinder is twice the temperature at infinity it is found that the drag on the cylinder is almost twice the drag on a similar unheated cylinder.

Oscillatory convective instability is shown to occur in a rotating fluid layer when convection is caused by surface-tension gradients at a free surface. The asymptotic equations, valid when the Taylor number approaches infinity, are solved analytically, and the critical Marangoni number is evaluated numerically. Fluids with Prandtl numbers above 0·201 will exhibit only stationary instability. Fluids with smaller Prandtl numbers will exhibit oscillatory instability with the critical Marangoni number varying as M0T½ where M0 depends on the Prandtl number and T is the Taylor number.

Integral constraints are derived for steady recirculating flows of nearly incompressible fluids, arising from the action of a small amount of viscosity and heat conduction. These constraints are then combined with the inviscid nondiffusive incompressible flow equations to show that two-dimensional flows containing closed nested streamlines, or three-dimensional flows with closed nested stream surfaces, are isothermal. In the former case it is shown that the vorticity is constant, and in the latter case there is an analogous result when the flow is axially symmetric and confined to axial planes. For a circular cell free convection problem, the interior temperature and vorticity are determined from the boundary conditions by an approximate integration of the boundary layer equations.

Waves at an unstable horizontal interface between two fluids moving vertically through a saturated porous medium are observed to grow rapidly to become fingers (i.e. the amplitude greatly exceeds the wavelength). For a diffusing interface, in experiments using a Hele-Shaw cell, the mean amplitude taken over many fingers grows approximately as (time)2, followed by a transition to a growth proportional to time. Correspondingly, the mean wave-number decreases approximately as (time)−½. Because of the rapid increase in amplitude, longitudinal dispersion ultimately becomes negligible relative to wave growth. To represent the observed quantities at large time, the transport equation is suitably weighted and averaged over the horizontal plane. Hyperbolic equations result, and the ascending and descending zones containing the fronts of the fingers are replaced by discontinuities. These averaged equations form an unclosed set, but closure is achieved by assuming a law for the mean wave-number based on similarity. It is found that the mean amplitude is fairly insensitive to changes in wave-number. Numerical solutions of the averaged equations give more detailed information about the growth behaviour, in excellent agreement with the similarity results and with the Hele-Shaw experiments.

An analysis of the full, compressible, non-adiabatic boundary-layer equations is presented to describe the so-called ‘throat’ formed when a two-dimensional viscous layer, interacting with a supersonic inviscid outer stream, is accelerated or decelerated through sonic velocity defined in some mean sense. The basic analysis differs from previous momentum integral theories in that the dynamics of the viscous layer is described by the exact local expressions for the streamwise gradients of the flow variables that obtain from the boundary-layer conservation equations, rather than on streamwise derivatives of integral properties of these equations. The theory is then used to develop an extensive analogy with the classical analysis of the throat in the inviscid quasi one-dimensional streamtube. The theory shows that a single integral constraint exists at the throat, which relates the velocity and temperature profiles in the viscous layer to the motion of the inviscid outer flow. One consequence of this constraint is that, for a one-parameter family of profile shapes, the solution can be started at the throat station by specifying only a single variable, the free stream Reynolds number based on the physical thickness of the viscous layer at the throat station. For the hypersonic near wake, this simplification permits one to obtain an approximate solution for the downstream flow without first solving the detailed motion in the base recirculation region. The paper ends with a discussion of the numerical results for the Stewartson family of wake-like profiles.

Self-similar flow patterns are studied which arise when a cylindrically symmetric strong shock or detonation wave propagates outwards into a gas at rest in which the ambient density varies as the inverse square of the distance from the axis of symmetry along which flows a line current of either zero or finite constant strength. The electrical conductivity of the gas on either side of the wave is supposed perfect and the discontinuities discussed are either gasdynamic or magnetogas-dynamic in nature. It is shown that self-similar solutions exist for piston driven gasdynamic detonation and shock waves. Whilst no self-similar solutions may occur for magnetogasdynamic detonation waves, it is demonstrated that magnetogasdynamic shock waves do possess such solutions for which detailed flow patterns are presented.

The rotating system of an infinite disk beneath an unbounded fluid can exhibit resonance if the disk performs torsional oscillations at a certain frequency. This effect is examined in detail, and the solution is shown to depend crucially upon the existence of a small, steady departure from the basic rotational state in the far field.

A non-linear theory of internal gravity waves of finite amplitude is developed in terms of conservation equations averaged with respect to the phase. The theory overcomes the failure of linear ray theory in regions in which waves are trapped and establishes the conditions under which finite amplitude waves may propagate. It gives a geometrical representation of the degeneration of waves into quasi-turbulence and predicts the dependence of the energy density on its parameters.

Fluid material line growth in turbulent flow has been measured by tagging lines with small hydrogen bubbles in the nearly isotropic turbulence behind a regular grid in a water tunnel. The average three-dimensional line lengths were inferred by an intersection-counting method carried out on one-plane photographs. The measurements cover ‘small’ time intervals only.

The dispersion relationship for plane hydromagnetic waves in a stratified rotating fluid (α) indicates that the well-known analogy between rotating fluids and stratified fluids in regard to their hydrodynamic behaviour does not extend to magnetohydrodynamic behaviour, and (b) lends credence to a certain conjecture made in a previous paper, namely that effects due to density stratification can be neglected when considering the dispersion relationship for free hydromagnetic oscillations of the Earth's core if the Brunt—Väisälä frequency is much less than twice the angular speed of the Earth's rotation.

The Seventh Shock Tube Symposium was held 23–25 June 1969 in Toronto, Canada. Sponsored by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies and the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the meeting drew nearly 300 attendees from some 20 countries. Of the 40 invited and contributed papers, several described new shock-tube techniques while the majority presented recent experimental results and related theory in the fields of shock structure, atomic and molecular physics, radiation, plasma flows, shock waves in solids, and boundary layers. This report summarizes the principal advances presented and attempts a projection of future directions in shock-tube research. The full proceedings will be published by the University of Toronto Press; the programme was published in the Bulletin of the American Physical Society, June 1969, p. 754.