Numerical stability studies of one-phase and immiscible two-phase jets and wakes

Abstract: The initial linear instability growth of two-dimensional plane wakes and jetsis investigated, by temporal two-dimensional global modes, and local spatialstability analysis. Comparisons are also made to experiments, direct numericalsimulations, and methods designed for weakly-non-parallel flows. The studiesproceed through three different flow setups with increasing complexity.The first flow analysed is a convectively unstable liquid sheet surroundedby a stagnant or co-flowing gas. The experimentally measured growth rates arefound to be in excellent agreement with spatial stability calculations, if the airboundary layer is taken into account, and not otherwise. The stabilizing effectof moderate air co-flow is quantified in the numerical study, and the governingparameters found to be the speed difference between water and air, and theshear from air at the water surface (inversely proportional to the air boundarylayer thickness).The second flow case is a one-phase confined wake, i.e. a wake in a channel.The effect of confinement (wall distance) on the global stability of wakes isanalysed by linear global modes, and compared to the results from DNS andweakly-non-parallel theory. At Re = 100, confinement is globally stabilizing,mostly due to a faster development towards a parabolic profile for confinedflows. The stabilizing effect of confinement almost disappears at Re ? 400.However, when the structural sensitivity of the wakes is analysed by an adjointbasedapproach, fundamental differences are seen in the global wavemakers ofconfined and unconfined wakes at Re ? 400.The third and most complex flow case is immiscible two-fluid wakes andjets. A parallel multi-domain spectral code is developed, where the kinematicand dynamic conditions on the interface are imposed as coupling conditions. Itis shown that intermediate values of surface tension can destabilize stable wakesand jets. In addition, surface tension has a considerable influence on the globaloscillation frequency and spatial shape of the global mode for unstable wakes.The character of the mode is gradually changed from a wake instability to aglobal shear layer instability. Both symmetric and antisymmetric modes areencountered for both wakes and jets, depending on the strength of the surfacetension (value of the Weber number) and the flow case.iii