The unsteady force acting on a sphere that is held fixed in a steady uniform flow with small-amplitude oscillations is evaluated to O(Re) for small Reynolds number Re. Good agreement is shown with the numerical results of Mei, Lawrence & Adrian (1991) up to Re ≈ 0.5. The analytical result is transformed by Fourier inversion to allow for an arbitrary time-dependent motion which is small relative to the steady uniform flow. This yields a history-dependent force which has an integration kernel that decays exponentially for large time.

Accurate numerical simulations of vortex rings impinging on flat boundaries revealed the same features observed in experiments. The results for the impact with a free-slip wall compared very well with previous numerical simulations that used spectral methods, and were also in qualitative agreement with experiments. The present simulation is mainly devoted to studying the more realistic case of rings interacting with a no-slip wall, experimentally studied by Walker et al. (1987). All the Reynolds numbers studied showed a very good agreement between experiments and simulations, and, at Rev > 1000 the ejection of a new ring from the wall was seen. Axisymmetric simulations demonstrated that vortex pairing is the physical mechanism producing the ejection of the new ring. Three-dimensional simulations were also performed to investigate the effects of azimuthal instabilities. These simulations have confirmed that high-wavenumber instabilities originate in the compression phase of the secondary ring within the primary one. The large instability of the secondary ring has been explained by analysis of the rate-of-strain tensor and vorticity alignment. The differences between passive scalars and the vorticity field have been also investigated.

Time-dependent interactions between two buoyancy-driven deformable drops are studied in the low Reynolds number flow limit for sufficiently large Bond numbers that the drops become significantly deformed. The first part of this paper considers the interaction and deformation of drops in axisymmetric configurations. Boundary integral calculations are presented for Bond numbers ℬ = Δρga2/σ in the range 0.25 ≤ ℬ < ∞ and viscosity ratios λ in the range 0.2 ≤ λ ≤ 20. Specifically, the case of a large drop following a smaller drop is considered, which typically leads to the smaller drop coating the larger drop for ℬ [Gt ] 1. Three distinct drainage modes of the thin film of fluid between the drops characterize axisymmetric two-drop interactions: (i) rapid drainage for which the thinnest region of the film is on the axis of symmetry, (ii) uniform drainage for which the film has a nearly constant thickness, and (iii) dimple formation. The initial mode of film drainage is always rapid drainage. As the separation distance decreases, film flow may change to uniform drainage and eventually to dimpled drainage. Moderate Bond numbers, typically ℬ = O(10) for λ = O(1), enhance dimple formation compared to either much larger or smaller Bond numbers. The numerical calculations also illustrate the extent to which lubrication theory and analytical solutions in bipolar coordinates (which assume spherical drop shapes) are applicable to deformable drops.

The second part of this investigation considers the 'stability’ of axisymmetric drop configurations. Laboratory experiments and two-dimensional boundary integral simulations are used to study the interactions between two horizontally offset drops. For sufficiently deformable drops, alignment occurs so that the small drop may still coat the large drop, whereas for large enough drop viscosities or high enough interfacial tension, the small drop will be swept around the larger drop. If the large drop is sufficiently deformable, the small drop may then be ‘sucked’ into the larger drop as it is being swept around the larger drop. In order to explain the alignment process, the shape and translation velocities of widely separated, nearly spherical drops are calculated using the method of reflections and a perturbation analysis for the deformed shapes. The perturbation analysis demonstrates explicitly that drops will tend to be aligned for ℬ > O(d/a) where d is the separation distance between the drops.

The nonlinear temporal-spatial modulation of a near-planar Rayleigh instability wave is studied. The amplitude of the wave is allowed to be a slowly varying function of spanwise position as well as of time (or streamwise variable in the spatial evolution case). It is shown that the development of the disturbance is controlled by critical-layer nonlinear effects when the linear growth rate decreases to O(ε⅖), where ε is the magnitude of the disturbance. Nonlinear interactions influence the evolution by producing spanwise dependent mean-flow distortions. The evolution is governed by an integro-partial-differential equation containing history-dependent nonlinear terms of Hickernell (1984) type. A notable feature of the amplitude equation is that the highest derivative with respect to spanwise position appears in the nonlinear terms. These terms are associated with three-dimensionality. The possible properties of the amplitude equation are discussed. Numerical solutions show that a disturbance initially centred at a spanwise position can propagate laterally to form concentrated, quasi-periodic streamwise vortices. This qualitatively captures the phenomena observed in experiments. The focusing of vorticity may be associated with a localized singularity which can occur at a finite distance downstream or within a finite time. It is noted that the amplitude equation is rather generic and applies to a broad class of shear flows which is inviscidly unstable.