Volumetric expansion driven drainage flow of a viscous compressible fluid from a small capillary with a sealed end is studied in the low Mach number limit using the linearized compressible Navier–Stokes equations with no-slip condition. Density relaxation, oscillation and decay as well as the velocity field are investigated in detail. It is shown that fluid drainage is controlled by the slow decay of the standing acoustic wave inside the capillary; and the acoustic wave retards the density diffusion by reducing the diffusion coefficient of the density envelope equation by one half. Remarkably the no-slip flow exhibits a slip-like mass flow rate. The period-averaged mass flow rate at the exit (drainage rate) is found proportional to the fluid’s kinematic viscosity via the density diffusion coefficient and the average drainage speed is independent of the capillary radius. These findings are valid for arbitrarily small capillaries as long as the continuum assumption holds and they are in stark contrast to the classical lubrication based theory. Generalization to a capillary with a sound absorbing end is achieved by a simple model. The reported results offer new insights to the nature of slow viscous compressible flows in very small capillaries.

Novel acoustic liner designs often incorporate new materials with non-uniform impedance distributions. Therefore, new methods are required for their modelling and analysis. In this paper, a theoretical model is developed to investigate the scattering of sound waves from an axially symmetrical flow duct with a semi-infinite, azimuthally non-uniform acoustic lining on the duct wall. More specifically, the incorporation of Fourier series expansions into the Wiener–Hopf method leads to an analytical model with a matrix kernel, which is further factorised by using the pole-removal method to obtain a closed-form solution. A new mathematical method is developed to solve the residues associated with the pole-removal technique. The proposed model has been verified and validated by comparing with corresponding computational results. In addition to shedding light on the possible physical effect of azimuthally non-uniform liners along with an axial hard–soft interface, the current model enhances the theoretical modelling capability for a complicated set-up of practical importance, and can be used to investigate new liner designs for passive noise control in flow ducts.

The irregular shape of particles in suspensions is typically approximated by simple geometries such as spheres or ellipsoids. We investigate the accuracy of such an approximation by comparing two irregular-shaped particles with different initial orientations against their equivalent spheroids in dilute volume fractions. Our results show that the average shear particle stress (and also intrinsic viscosity) of irregular particles can be 20 %–120 % higher than the maximum value of their geometric or kinematic equivalent spheroidal particles, and closer to spheroids with higher aspect ratios. We found that two geometric factors of an irregular shape, i.e., dimensionless surface-to-volume ratio and moment of inertia per unit volume (non-dimensionalized by the one-half the largest diameter of the particle), are correlated with the particle stress. In fact, the shear particle stress of a ring-shaped particle, which has a very large value of these factors, is five times larger than its equivalent spheroid. The correlation of these geometric factors with particle stress is further confirmed by considering two families of shapes (cylinder- and sphere-like particles). We also found that acceleration stress and especially Reynolds stress (stress mechanisms due to inertia) can have average values comparable to the stresslet term and effectively increase and decrease the absolute value of the first normal stress difference $N_{1}$ and second normal stress difference $N_{2}$, respectively. However, their contribution to the shear particle stress is negligible. Our results pave the way to define better equivalent particles for irregular ones.

We consider the steady supercritical flow of a fluid layer. The layer is bounded above by a free surface and below by a rigid no-slip base. The base is in two parts: the downstream part of the base is stationary, while the upstream part translates in the streamwise direction with a uniform speed; there is an abrupt transition. At high Reynolds number, a boundary layer forms in the fluid above the base downstream of the transition point. The displacement due to this boundary layer creates a perturbation to the outer flow and therefore to the free surface. We show that the Blasius boundary layer solution, which applies in an infinitely deep fluid, also applies at high Froude numbers. The Blasius solution no longer applies for flows that are just supercritical, as the outer flow is strongly affected by the presence of the boundary layer. We outline possible applications of this work to depth-averaged models of gravity currents.

As reconnection begins and the enstrophy $Z$ grows for two configurations, helical trefoil knots and anti-parallel vortices, two regimes of self-similar collapse are observed. First, during trefoil reconnection a new $\sqrt{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}Z$ scaling, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ is viscosity, is identified before any $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}Z$ dissipation scaling begins. Further rescaling shows linearly decreasing $B_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}(t)=(\sqrt{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}Z)^{-1/2}$ at configuration-dependent crossing times $t_{x}$. Gaps in the vortex structures identify the $t_{x}$ as when reconnection ends and collapse onto $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$-independent curves can be obtained using $A_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}(t)=(T_{c}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D708})-t_{x})(B_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}(t)-B_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}(t_{x}))$. The critical times $T_{c}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D708})$ are identified empirically by extrapolating the linear $B_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}(t)$ regimes to $B_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}^{{\sim}}(T_{c})=0$, yielding an $A_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}(t)$ collapse that forms early as $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ varies by 256. These solutions are regular or non-singular, as shown by decreasing cubic velocity norms $\Vert u\Vert _{L_{\ell }^{3}}^{}$. For the anti-parallel vortices, first there is an exchange of circulation, from $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}(y=0)$ to $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{z}(z=0)$, mediated by the viscous circulation exchange integral $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}}(t)$, which is followed by a modified $B_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}(t)$ collapse until the reconnection ends at $t_{x}$. Singular Leray scaling and mathematical bounds for higher-order Sobolev norms are used to help explain the origins of the new scaling and why the domain size $\ell$ has to increase to maintain the collapse of $A_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}(t)$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}}$ as $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ decreases.

This paper presents new asymptotic formulae for flow in a channel with one or both walls patterned with a longitudinal array of ridges and arbitrarily protruding menisci. Derived from a matched asymptotic expansion, they extend results by Crowdy (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 791, 2016, R7) for shear flow, and thus make no restriction on the protrusion into or out of the liquid. The slip length formula is compared against full numerical solutions and, despite the assumption of small ridge period in its derivation, is found to have a very large range of validity; relative errors are small even for periods large enough for the protruding menisci to degrade the flow and touch the opposing wall.

We use two-dimensional direct numerical simulations of Boussinesq stratified shear layers to investigate the influence of the minimum gradient Richardson number $Ri_{m}$ on the early time evolution of Kelvin–Helmholtz instability to its saturated ‘billow’ state. Even when the diffusion of the background velocity and density distributions is counterbalanced by artificial body forces to maintain the initial profiles, in the limit as $Ri_{m}\rightarrow 1/4$, the perturbation growth rate tends to zero and the saturated perturbation energy becomes small. These results imply, at least for such canonical inflectional stratified shear flows, that ‘marginally unstable’ flows with $Ri_{m}$ only slightly less than 1/4 are highly unlikely to become ‘turbulent’, in the specific sense of being associated with significantly enhanced dissipation, irreversible mixing and non-trivial modification of the background distributions without additional externally imposed forcing.