We investigate and compare various types of acoustic trapped modes (TMs) in resonator–waveguide systems. The goal is to understand the commonality and difference between the mechanisms of common (symmetry protected, invisibility protected and symmetry–periodicity protected) and accidental TMs, occurring continuously and discretely in the resonator length–frequency two-parameter space. The latter type cannot yet be explained via an operator decomposition. Here, all TMs are explained in the same way by analysing why and how the propagating-wave loops in the eigenfunctions can satisfy the eigenmode condition (loop magnitude and phase constraints for closure) and the wave-trapping condition (loop zero-radiation condition) simultaneously. Firstly, the unified analysis reveals the commonality that one or multiple coupled propagating-wave loops satisfy TM conditions, and the difference. In common TMs, the loop zero radiation is independent of the single loop phase constraint that selects the TM frequency as a continuous function of resonator length. On the other hand, loop zero radiation in accidental TMs depends on the loop phase constraints and there are two phase constraints. Only at the crossing points of the two phase constraints can zero-radiation loops be ensured. Secondly, in contrast to previous studies, it suggests that modal degeneracy, avoided crossing and resonance-width bifurcation are not the mechanisms of accidental TMs.

We present a local stability analysis of an idealized model of the stratified vortices that appear in geophysical settings. The base flow comprises an axisymmetric vortex with background rotation and an out-of-plane stable stratification, and a radial stratification in the thermal wind balance with the out-of-plane momentum gradient. Solving the local stability equations along fluid particle trajectories in the base flow, the dependence of short-wavelength instabilities on the Schmidt number $Sc$ (ratio between momentum and mass diffusivities) is studied, in the presence of curvature effects. In the diffusion-free limit, the well-known symmetric instability is recovered. In the viscous, double-diffusive regime, instability characteristics are shown to depend on three non-dimensional parameters (including $Sc$), and two different instabilities are identified: (i) a monotonic instability (same as symmetric instability at $Sc = 1$), and (ii) an oscillatory instability (absent at $Sc = 1$). Separating the base flow and perturbation characteristics, two each of base flow and perturbation parameters (apart from $Sc$) are identified, and the entire parameter space is explored for the aforementioned instabilities. In comparison with $Sc = 1$, monotonic and oscillatory instabilities are shown to significantly expand the instability region in the space of base flow parameters as $Sc$ moves away from unity. Neutral stability boundaries on the plane of $Sc$ and a modified gradient Richardson number are then identified for both these instabilities. In the absence of curvature effects, our results are shown to be consistent with previous studies based on normal mode analysis, thus establishing that the local stability approach is well suited to capturing symmetric and double-diffusive instabilities. The paper concludes with a discussion of curvature effects, and the likelihood of monotonic and oscillatory instabilities in typical oceanic settings.

We investigate the coupling effects of the two-phase interface, viscosity ratio and density ratio of the dispersed phase to the continuous phase on the flow statistics in two-phase Taylor–Couette turbulence at a system Reynolds number of $6\times 10^3$ and a system Weber number of 10 using interface-resolved three-dimensional direct numerical simulations with the volume-of-fluid method. Our study focuses on four different scenarios: neutral droplets, low-viscosity droplets, light droplets and low-viscosity light droplets. We find that neutral droplets and low-viscosity droplets primarily contribute to drag enhancement through the two-phase interface, whereas light droplets reduce the system's drag by explicitly reducing Reynolds stress due to the density dependence of Reynolds stress. In addition, low-viscosity light droplets contribute to greater drag reduction by further reducing momentum transport near the inner cylinder and implicitly reducing Reynolds stress. While interfacial tension enhances turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) transport, drag enhancement is not strongly correlated with TKE transport for both neutral droplets and low-viscosity droplets. Light droplets primarily reduce the production term by diminishing Reynolds stress, whereas the density contrast between the phases boosts TKE transport near the inner wall. Therefore, the reduction in the dissipation rate is predominantly attributed to decreased turbulence production, causing drag reduction. For low-viscosity light droplets, the production term diminishes further, primarily due to their greater reduction in Reynolds stress, while reduced viscosity weakens the density difference's contribution to TKE transport near the inner cylinder, resulting in a more pronounced reduction in the dissipation rate and consequently stronger drag reduction. Our findings provide new insights into the physics of turbulence modulation by the dispersed phase in two-phase turbulence systems.

Energy transfer in turbulent fluids is non-Gaussian. We quantify non-Gaussian energy transfer between the atmosphere and bodies of water using a turbulent diffusion operator coupled with temporally self-affine velocity distributions and a recursive integration method that produce multifractal measures. The measures serve as input to a system of moment field equations (derived from Navier–Stokes) that generate and track high-frequency gravity waves that propagate through the water surface (as a result of the air–water interactions). The dimension of the support of the air–water turbulence produced by our methods falls within the range of theory and observation, and correspondingly, hindcast statistical measures of the water-wave surface such as significant water-wave height and wave period are well correlated to observational buoy data. Further, our recursive integration method can be used by spectral resolving phase-averaged models to interpolate temporal wind data to smaller scales to capture the non-Gaussian behaviour of the air–water interaction.

Direct numerical simulations of channel flow and temporal boundary layer at a Reynolds number $Re_{\tau } = 1500$ are used to assess the scale-by-scale mechanisms of wall turbulence. From the peak of turbulence production embedded at the small scales of the near-wall region, spatially ascending reverse cascades are generated that move through self-similar eddies growing in size with the wall distance. These fluxes are followed by spatially ascending forward cascades through detached eddies thus reaching sufficiently small scales where eventually scale energy is dissipated. This phenomenology is shared by both boundary layer and channel flow and is recognized as a robust physical feature characterizing wall turbulence in general. Specific features related to the flow configuration are indeed identified in the outer region. In particular, the central region of channels is characterized by a generalized Richardson energy cascade where large scales are in equilibrium with small scales at different wall distances through a combined forward cascade and spatial flux. On the contrary, the interface region of boundary layers is characterized by an almost two-dimensional physics where spatially ascending reverse cascades sustain long and wide interface structures with a forward cascade that survives only in the wall-normal scales. The overall scenario consists in a variety of scale motions that while protruding from the turbulent core towards the external region, squeeze at the interface thus sustaining vertical shear in a thin layer. The observed multidimensional physics sheds light on the complex interactions between outer entrainment and near-wall self-sustaining mechanisms with possible repercussions for theories.

The dipole–multipole transition in rapidly rotating dynamos is investigated through the analysis of forced magnetohydrodynamic waves in an unstably stratified fluid. The focus of this study is on the inertia-free limit applicable to planetary cores, where the Rossby number is small not only on the core depth but also on the length scale of columnar convection. By progressively increasing the buoyant forcing in a linear magnetoconvection model, the slow magnetic–Archimedean–Coriolis (MAC) waves are significantly attenuated so that their kinetic helicity decreases to zero; the fast MAC wave helicity, on the other hand, is practically unaffected. In turn, polarity reversals in low-inertia spherical dynamos are shown to occur when the slow MAC waves disappear under strong forcing. Two dynamically similar regimes are identified – the suppression of slow waves in a strongly forced dynamo and the excitation of slow waves in a moderately forced dynamo starting from a small seed field. While the former regime results in polarity reversals, the latter regime produces the axial dipole from a chaotic multipolar state. For either polarity transition, a local Rayleigh number based on the mean wavenumber of the energy-containing scales bears the same linear relationship with the square of the peak magnetic field measured at the transition. The self-similarity of the dipole–multipole transition can place a constraint on the Rayleigh number for polarity reversals in the Earth.

Experiments were performed to document the complex flow field around and over a $70^{\circ }$ swept fin mounted on a $7^{\circ }$ half-angle right-circular cone in a Mach 6 free-stream. Of particular interest is the turbulent transition of the boundary layer over the swept fin, which is expected to be dominated by a cross-flow instability. Stationary features in the surface temperature distribution over the fin are documented using infrared thermal imaging. These were processed further to determine average spatial Stanton number distributions over the fin. Wavelet analysis of the Stanton number distributions revealed stationary patterns with wavelengths near the fin leading edge that were consistent with linear theory predictions of stationary cross-flow modes. Further from the leading edge, the wavelength of the stationary patterns was observed to increase prior to turbulence onset. Based on these observations, specially designed arrays of discrete roughness elements (DREs) were investigated as a means of delaying turbulence transition with the objective of reducing surface heat flux on the swept fin. The DRE designs followed our previous approach used for cross-flow transition control (Corke et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 856, issue 10, 2018, pp. 822–849; Arndt et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 887, 2020, A30). These focused on either the shorter wavelengths near the leading edge, or the longer wavelengths that developed near turbulence onset. With regard to delaying transition and reducing the surface heat flux, the DREs that focused on the larger wavelengths of stationary modes were most effective. The fin included an array of pressure sensors that were used to document travelling disturbances that could include those associated with travelling cross-flow modes. Phase analysis of the pressure fluctuation time series was used to determine the wavelength, wave angle and phase speed that were consistent with the travelling cross-flow modes. Cross-bicoherence analysis between the stationary and travelling disturbances indicates a nonlinear phase locking that can account for the development of the longer-wavelength stationary features in the surface heat flux, presumed to be due to stationary cross-flow modes, prior to turbulence onset.

In this study, the resolvent-based estimation (RBE) is further generalised to cases with arbitrarily sampled measurements in time, where the generalised RBE is denoted as GRBE in this study. Different from the RBE that constructs the transfer function at each frequency, the GRBE minimises the estimation error energy in the physical temporal domain by considering the forcing and noise statistics. The GRBE is validated by estimating the complex Ginzburg–Landau equation and turbulent channel flows with the friction Reynolds number $Re_{\tau }=186$, 547 and 934, where the results from the RBE are also included. When the measurements are temporally resolved, the estimation results of the two approaches are equivalent to each other, and both match well with the reference numerical results. For the temporally unresolved cases, the estimation errors from the GRBE are obviously lower than those from the RBE. After validation, the GRBE is applied to investigate the impacts of the abundance of the measured information, including the temporal information and sensor types, on the estimation accuracy. Compared with the mean square error (MSE) in the estimation with temporally resolved measurements, that with measurements at only one snapshot, i.e. without any temporal information, increases by approximately $15\,\%$. On the other hand, it can effectively improve the estimation accuracy by increasing the number of sensor types. With temporally resolved measurements, the relative MSE decreases by $12.3\,\%$ when the sensor types increase from $\lbrace \tau _u \rbrace$ to $\lbrace \tau _u,\tau _w,p \rbrace$, where $\tau_u$, $\tau_w$ and p are the streamwise shear stress, spanwise shear stress and pressure at the wall. Finally, several existing forcing models are incorporated into the GRBE to investigate their performance in the linear estimation of flow state. The wall-distance-dependent model (W-model) results match well with the optimal linear estimations when the measurements are temporally unresolved. Meanwhile, with the increase of temporal information of the measurement, the estimation errors from the tested W-model and the scale-dependent model ($\lambda$-model) both increase, which contradicts the tendency observed in the optimal linear GRBE estimation results. Such a phenomenon highlights the importance of proper modelling of the forcing in the temporal domain for the accuracy of flow state estimation.

Understanding the effect of intricate surface wettability conditions on microswimmers is crucial for precisely navigating them across narrow microcirculatory networks. Here, we adopt the spherical squirmer model and Navier slip condition to delineate the microswimmer locomotion under a Poiseuille flow in a slit microchannel. Through a combined analytical–numerical approach utilizing bispherical coordinates and the superposition technique, we resolve the slip-modulated simultaneous hydrodynamic interaction with substrate boundaries. Phase portraits reveal that slip significantly alters propulsion mechanisms, destabilizing centreline stable oscillations of pullers beyond a threshold slip length. Superhydrophobic surfaces suppress near-wall rheotaxis states but preserve centreline focusing, facilitating slip-assisted directed transport without surface accumulation. Under strong background flows, subcritical Hopf bifurcation emerges for pullers at a critical slip length, transitioning dynamics from coexisting stable and unstable states to purely unstable behaviour. Contrastingly, for pushers, slip causes a transition from unstable to either stable or fixed-amplitude oscillations. Increased slip length reduces hydrodynamic repulsion on pullers from the walls by enhancing rotational velocity near the walls, whereas it counteracts the torque that causes unstable oscillations of pushers. Three-dimensional analysis of the trajectories reveals the significant role of the out-of-plane orientation of the microswimmer in its transitions between different swimming states. The presented regime maps offer parametric combinations for specific motion behaviours, guiding the development of smart microfluidic drug delivery systems and preventing biofilm deposition in biomedical devices.

A Lagrangian approach to both hydrostatic non-dispersive in the short-wave range and non-hydrostatic dispersive rotating shallow-water magnetohydrodynamics is developed, and used to analyse weakly and fully nonlinear waves described by the model. Hyperbolic structure in the non-dispersive case is displayed and Riemann invariants are constructed. Characteristic equations are used to establish criteria of breaking and formation of shocks by magneto-gravity waves, and conditions of the appearance of contact discontinuities in Alfvén waves. As in the case of non-magnetic rotating shallow water, rotation cannot prevent breaking. The Lagrangian equations of the model are reduced to a single partial differential ‘master’ equation, which is used to analyse the propagation of weakly nonlinear waves of both families, with or without weak rotation, and with or without weak short-wave dispersion. Corresponding modulation equations are constructed and their main properties sketched. The same master equation is used to obtain fully nonlinear finite-amplitude wave solutions in particular cases of no short-wave dispersion or no rotation.

Although poroelastic clusters in nature, such as bristled wings and plumed seeds, exhibit remarkable flight performances by virtue of their porous structure, the effects of another key feature, elasticity, on aerodynamic loading remain elusive. For a poroelastic cluster, we investigate the aerodynamic effects of elastic deformation that occurs through the collective rearrangement of many elastic components and the fluid-dynamic interactions between them. As a simple two-dimensional model, an array of multiple cylinders which are individually and elastically mounted is employed with diverse values of porosity and elasticity. Under a uniform free stream, the poroelastic cluster enlarges its frontal area and augments the total drag force in the quasi-steady state; this is in contrast to the general reconfiguration of fixed elastic structures, which tends to reduce the frontal area and drag. The rearrangement of the poroelastic cluster is dominated by the virtual fluid barrier that develops in a gap between the elastic components, interrupting the flow penetrating between them. The effects of this hydrodynamic blockage on changes in the frontal area and drag force are analysed in terms of porosity and elasticity, revealing the fluid-dynamic mechanism underlying the appearance of peak drag at an intermediate porosity. Moreover, to represent the coupled effects of porosity and elasticity on the rearrangement, a scaled elastic energy is derived through a consideration of the energy balance.

We take advantage of the extremely small kinematic viscosity of superfluid $^4$He to investigate the propagation of macroscopic vortex rings at Reynolds numbers between $2 \times 10^4$ and $4 \times 10^6$. These inhomogeneous flow structures are thermally generated by releasing short power pulses into a small volume of liquid, open to the surrounding bath through a vertical tube $2$ mm in diameter. We study specifically the ring behaviour between $1.30$ and $1.80$ K using the flow visualization and second sound attenuation techniques. From the obtained data sets, containing more than $2600$ realizations, we find that the rings remain well-defined in space and time for distances up to at least $40$ tube diameters, and that their circulation depends significantly on the travelled distance, in a way similar to that observed for turbulent vortex rings propagating in Newtonian fluids. Additionally, the ring velocity and circulation appear to be influenced solely by a single, experimentally accessible parameter, combining the liquid temperature with the magnitude and duration of the power pulse. Overall, our results support the view that macroscopic vortex rings moving in superfluid $^4$He closely resemble their Newtonian analogues, at least in the absence of significant thermal effects and at sufficiently large flow scales.