Supersonic gas jets generated via a conical nozzle are widely applied in the laser wakefield acceleration of electrons. The stability of the gas jet is critical to the electron injection and the reproducibility of the wakefield acceleration. Here we discussed the role of the stilling chamber in a modified converging–diverging nozzle to dissipate the turbulence and to stabilize the gas jets. By the fluid dynamics simulations and the Mach–Zehnder interferometer measurements, the instability originating from the nonlinear turbulence is studied and the mechanism to suppress the instability is proposed. Both the numerical and experimental results prove that the carefully designed nozzle with a stilling chamber is able to reduce the perturbation by more than 10% compared with a simple-conical nozzle.

In the current study, for the first time, a semi-analytical technique is used for solving eigenvalue problem arising from linear hydrodynamics stability of fluid flow through the curved rectangular ducts at different curvature ratios and aspect ratios. To this accomplishment, symmetric disturbances are assumed and the Homotopy perturbation method (HPM) is applied to solve our eigenvalue problem for curvature ratios ranging from 0.01 to 0.8 and aspect ratios ranging from 0.05 to 20. Our semi-analytical results are validated through the existing numerical and experimental data, showing good agreement. The semi-analytical results indicate that, as the curvature ratio increases the critical Dean number (Dnc) is increased and the flow becomes more stable, especially for aspect ratios lower than 1.Moreover, for all intended curvature ratios, irregular behavior in variation of Dnc is detected by an increase in the aspect ratio. So that, the Dnc is decreased when the aspect ratio increases from 0.05 up to 1 and the fluid flow becomes unstable. When the aspect ratio is increased from 1 to 5, it causes to increase the Dnc and fluid flow becomes stable. Furthermore, when the aspect ratio increases from 5 to 20, the Dnc is decreased again. In addition, Dnc and eigenvalues of critical complex wave number corresponding to Dnc for the onset of Dean flow instability is reported under different curvature ratios and aspect ratios.

In the present paper, we investigate the hydrodynamic instability of Dean flow under different Dean numbers ranging from 1 to 2500, curvature ratios from 0.0001 up to 1000 and temperatures ranging from 273.15 K to 373.15 K. To study of fluid flow instability, analytical velocity profiles under intended conditions and energy gradient function K in the energy gradient method are evaluated. The results of present study show that, as the curvature ratio increases the flow becomes more stable. Moreover, no regular and significant effects on the energy gradient function K were achieved by increasing of temperatures. We found that, the origin of instability in the entire flow field is located on the inner wall of the parallel curved walls, especially for larger curvature ratios. We also reported the critical value of the energy gradient function K for the onset of instability corresponding to the critical Dean number.

We consider inviscid, incompressible shear flows with variable density and variable cross section. For this problem, we derived a new estimate for the growth rate of an unstable mode and a parabolic instability region which intersects semiellipse instability region under some condition.

For problems governed by a non-normal operator, the leading eigenvalue of the operator is of limited interest and a more relevant measure of the stability is obtained by considering the harmonic forcing causing the largest system response. Various methods for determining this so-called optimal forcing exist, but they all suffer from great computational expense and are hence not practical for large-scale problems. In the present paper a new method is presented, which is applicable to problems of arbitrary size. The method does not rely on timestepping, but on the solution of linear systems, in which the inverse Laplacian acts as a preconditioner. By formulating the search for the optimal forcing as an eigenvalue problem based on the resolvent operator, repeated system solves amount to power iterations, in which the dominant eigenvalue is seen to correspond to the energy amplification in a system for a given frequency, and the eigenfunction to the corresponding forcing function. Implementation of the method requires only minor modifications of an existing timestepping code, and is applicable to any partial differential equation containing the Laplacian, such as the Navier-Stokes equations. We discuss the method, first, in the context of the linear Ginzburg-Landau equation and then, the two-dimensional lid-driven cavity flow governed by the Navier-Stokes equations. Most importantly, we demonstrate that for the lid-driven cavity, the optimal forcing can be computed using a factor of up to 500 times fewer operator evaluations than the standard method based on exponential timestepping.

This paper describes an adaptive preconditioner for numerical continuation of incompressible Navier–Stokes flows based on Stokes preconditioning [42] which has been used successfully in studies of pattern formation in convection. The preconditioner takes the form of the Helmholtz operator I–ΔtL which maps the identity (no preconditioner) for Δt≪1 to Laplacian preconditioning for Δt≫1. It is built on a first order Euler time-discretization scheme and is part of the family of matrix-free methods. The preconditioner is tested on two fluid configurations: three-dimensional doubly diffusive convection and a two-dimensional projection of a shear flow. In the former case, it is found that Stokes preconditioning is more efficient for , away from the values used in the literature. In the latter case, the simple use of the preconditioner is not sufficient and it is necessary to split the system of equations into two subsystems which are solved simultaneously using two different preconditioners, one of which is parameter dependent. Due to the nature of these applications and the flexibility of the approach described, this preconditioner is expected to help in a wide range of applications.

We study the stability of inviscid, incompressible swirling flows of variable density with respect to azimuthal, normal mode disturbances. We prove that the wave velocity of neutral modes is bounded. A further refinement of Fung’s semi-elliptical instability region is given. This new instability region depends not only on the minimum Richardson number, and the lower and upper bounds for the angular velocity like Fung’s semi-ellipse, but also on the azimuthal wave number and the radii of the inner and outer cylinders. An estimation for the growth rate of unstable disturbances is obtained and it is compared to some of the recent asymptotic results.