This article presents the computation of a set of control parameters for the deterministic prediction of laminar boundary-layer instabilities induced by an imposed unsteady shock interaction. The objective of the study is exploratory in nature by computing a supersonic flight environment for flow over a blunt body and the deterministic prediction of the spectral entropy rates for the boundary l...

Electrokinetic flow instabilities occur under high electric fields in the presence of electrical conductivity gradients. Such instabilities are a key factor limiting the robust performance of complex electrokinetic bio-analytical systems, but can also be exploited for rapid mixing and flow control for microscale devices. This paper reports a representative flow instability phenomenon studied us...

Non-axisymmetric simulations verify and extend the results from a previous linear Floquet stability analysis of the wakes of rings. The wakes corresponding to the saturated state of each predicted non-axisymmetric instability mode over the entire aspect ratio range are successfully computed, and isosurface plots are presented elucidating the vortical wake structures. The existence of three non-...

The fundamental question of how the flow velocity of the background plasma can influence the motion of magneto-hydrodynamics instabilities and, in ultimate analysis, their stability is addressed. The growth of Resistive Wall Mode instabilities in toroidal confinement devices well represents one example of such a problem. In this paper we illustrate a new strategy that allowed, for the first tim...

Many authors have recognized that traffic under the traditional car-following model (CFM) is subject to flow instabilities. A recent model achieves stability using bilateral control (BCM)—by looking both forward and backward [1]. (Looking back may be difficult or distracting for human drivers, but is not a problem for sensors.) We analyze the underlying systems of differential equations by stud...

A phenomenological model of parametric surface waves (Faraday waves) is introduced in the limit of small viscous dissipation that accounts for the coupling between surface motion and slowly varying streaming and large-scale flows (mean flow). The primary bifurcation of the model is to a set of standing waves (stripes, given the functional form of the model nonlinearities chosen here). Our resul...

In the presence of a vertically varying horizontal current (background shear), the salt-fingering instability is supplanted by the salt-sheet instability. Previous direct numerical simulation (DNS) experiments on salt sheets revealed that flow becomes turbulent via secondary instabilities. We call these instabilities zig-zag and tip modes. Here, we investigate the physics of these modes using l...

We investigate the stability of a fluid confined between two cylinders that rotate at same constant angular speed. In the case of infinite cylinders, or endwalls rotating with the cylinders, the flow is in solid-body rotation and hence linearly stable for any rotation speed. However, when the endwalls are stationary, a large-scale circulation is driven by radially inward boundary layer flow on ...

Small quasi-two-dimensional dust clusters consisting of three to eleven particles are formed in an argon plasma under varying rf power. Their normal modes are investigated through their mode spectra obtained from tracking the particles' thermal motion. Detailed coupling patterns between their horizontal and vertical modes are detected for particle numbers up to 7 and discrete instabilities are ...