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Lecture

Fluid Mechanics: Boundary Layer Instability and Transition

In course

ME-466: Instability

This course focuses on the physical mechanisms at the origin of the transition of a flow from laminar to turbulent using the hydrodynamic instability theory. ...

Description

This lecture covers topics such as Hagen Poiseuille and Couette flows, the rate of temporal growth of boundary layer instability, neutral curves, edge states, and the effects of nonlinearities on flow stability. It also discusses transient growth, bypass transition, and alternate methods for analyzing flow instabilities.

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Instructor

François Gallaire

Né le 26 février 1975, François Gallaire obtient, en 1998, le diplôme dingénieur de lEcole Polytechnique à Paris et, en 1999, un master en « Physique des liquides » à lUniversité Pierre et Marie Curie, toujours à Paris. Il rejoint ensuite le Laboratoire dhydrodynamique (LadHyX) à lEcole polytechnique où il soutient, en 2003, une thèse sur le thème des instabilités des jets tournants et sur le contrôle de léclatement tourbillonnaire sous la direction de Jean-Marrc Chomaz. En 2003, il est nommé chargé de recherche au CNRS au Laboratoire J.A. Dieudonné de lUniversité de Nice Sophia-Antipolis.En 2009, il rejoint l'EPFL pour y fonder le laboratoire des mécanique des fluides et instabilités (LFMI). Ses recherches se concentrent sur létude des propriétés fondamentales de stabilité des écoulements de fluides et sont guidées par les applications réelles, en particulier le contrôle des écoulements. Récemment, il a réalisé dimportantes contributions dans les domaines de la micro-fluidique (lanalyse de la manipulation par laser dune goutte dans un micro-canal) et la dynamique des bio-fluides (le descriptif mécanique de lanévrisme de laorte abdominale).

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Boundary layer

In physics and fluid mechanics, a boundary layer is the thin layer of fluid in the immediate vicinity of a bounding surface formed by the fluid flowing along the surface. The fluid's interaction with the wall induces a no-slip boundary condition (zero velocity at the wall). The flow velocity then monotonically increases above the surface until it returns to the bulk flow velocity. The thin layer consisting of fluid whose velocity has not yet returned to the bulk flow velocity is called the velocity boundary layer.

Fluid mechanics

Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasmas) and the forces on them. It has applications in a wide range of disciplines, including mechanical, aerospace, civil, chemical, and biomedical engineering, as well as geophysics, oceanography, meteorology, astrophysics, and biology. It can be divided into fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest; and fluid dynamics, the study of the effect of forces on fluid motion.

Stokes flow

Stokes flow (named after George Gabriel Stokes), also named creeping flow or creeping motion, is a type of fluid flow where advective inertial forces are small compared with viscous forces. The Reynolds number is low, i.e. . This is a typical situation in flows where the fluid velocities are very slow, the viscosities are very large, or the length-scales of the flow are very small. Creeping flow was first studied to understand lubrication. In nature, this type of flow occurs in the swimming of microorganisms and sperm.

Boundary layer thickness

This page describes some of the parameters used to characterize the thickness and shape of boundary layers formed by fluid flowing along a solid surface. The defining characteristic of boundary layer flow is that at the solid walls, the fluid's velocity is reduced to zero. The boundary layer refers to the thin transition layer between the wall and the bulk fluid flow. The boundary layer concept was originally developed by Ludwig Prandtl and is broadly classified into two types, bounded and unbounded.

Shear flow

In fluid dynamics, shear flow is the flow induced by a force in a fluid. In solid mechanics, shear flow is the shear stress over a distance in a thin-walled structure. For thin-walled profiles, such as that through a beam or semi-monocoque structure, the shear stress distribution through the thickness can be neglected. Furthermore, there is no shear stress in the direction normal to the wall, only parallel. In these instances, it can be useful to express internal shear stress as shear flow, which is found as the shear stress multiplied by the thickness of the section.

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