The present study is concerned with the stability of a flow of viscous conducting liquid driven by a pressure gradient between two parallel walls in the presence of a transverse magnetic field, which is investigated using a Chebyshev collocation method. This magnetohydrodynamic counterpart of the classic plane Poiseuille flow is generally known as Hartmann flow. Although the magnetic field has a strong stabilizing effect, the turbulence is known to set in this flow similarly to its hydrodynamic counterpart well below the threshold predicted by the linear stability theory. Such a nonlinear transition to turbulence is thought to be mediated by unstable equilibrium flow states which may exist in addition to the base flow. Firstly, the weakly nonlinear stability analysis carried out in this study shows that Hartmann flow is subcritically unstable to small finite-amplitude disturbances regardless of the magnetic field strength. Secondly, two-dimensional nonlinear travelling wave states are found to exist in Hartmann flow at substantially subcritical Reynolds numbers starting from Ren = 2939 without the magnetic field and from Ren ∼ 6.50 × 103Ha in a sufficiently strong magnetic field defined by the Hartmann number Ha. Although the latter value is by a factor of seven lower than the linear stability threshold Rel ∼ 4.83×104Ha and by almost a factor of two lower than the value predicted by the mean-field (monoharmonic) approximation, it is still more than an order of magnitude higher than the experimentally observed value for the onset of turbulence in this flow. Three-dimensional disturbances are expected to bifurcate from these two-dimensional travelling waves or infinity and to extend to significantly lower Reynolds numbers. The by-product of this study are two developments of numerical techniques for linear and weakly nonlinear stability analysis. Firstly, a simple technique for avoiding spurious eigenvalues is developed for the solution of the Orr-Sommerfeld equation. Secondly, an efficient numerical method for evaluating Landau coefficients which describe small amplitude states in the vicinity of the linear stability threshold is introduced. The method differs from the standard approach by applying the solvability condition to the discretised rather than the continuous problem.

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The rising trend in marital instability and divorce is a topic of discussion nearly world-wide. While divorce affects considerably fewer people in non-Western societies, its rising trend and impact are quite alarming. Given the well established findings in the West, it is useful to study divorce and marital instability in non-Western societies so that prior findings from the West can be scrutinized and validated cross-culturally. This study is necessary because the theories developed in the West may not be entirely applicable to non-Western societies and cultural factors may in some cases be more important than socio-economic factors. By using the East Asian Social Survey (EASS), a three-society survey conducted in China, Taiwan, and South Korea in the later part of the 1990s, this study investigates the determinants of marital instability in three East Asian societies. Drawing insights from three theoretical traditions, namely, socio-cultural context, resources, and gender, the central goal of this study is to use comparable survey data and quantitative analyses (i.e., ordered logistics regression) to explore the effects of resources, gender (marital) roles, and gender beliefs on marital instability in the selected three societies. Results from multivariate statistical analyses suggest that the effects of resources, gender roles, and gender beliefs on marital instability vary not only by societies under study but also by gender. While the findings lent limited support to the resources-based theory, gender beliefs and to a lesser extent, gender roles, emerged as the most consistent predictors of marital instability in all three societies. Data limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

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Despite the staggering volume of work in the open literature on primary and secondary atomization, there is nothing known that addresses the mechanisms for, and injector geometry implications for, primary atomization within a self-sustained pulsating transonic three-stream injector. Thus, a computational effort involving 86 simulations, including multiple validation exercises, has been executed in order to develop a numerical foundation and then study the effects of nozzle geometry, numerical methodology, grid resolution, modeled domain extent, feed rates, feed flow modulation, feed flow swirl, feed materials, and operating conditions. This is the first undertaking ever reported to disclose the intense details of transonic pulsating flows within the three-stream injector. Metrics for assessment of acoustics and temporal spray character were numerous. Frequency responses among those metrics implied a common pulsation-driving mechanism. It has been discovered that liquid bridging with the production of a liquid fountain and shocklet-like structures in the retracted (pre-filming) zone, along with localized gas-liquid normal pressure gradients, are responsible for bulk pulsations. These findings were never reported in the literature, thus represent an important contribution of this study. Unexpectedly, a new trend for temporal mean droplet size, when normalized by distance from the nozzle, versus distance from the nozzle has been found, which took a common form among all geometries and feed materials tested. Therefore, there is some value to simulate air-water flows, first, to scope general parameters and characteristics, before modeling more computationally challenging slurry flows. This represents an additional contribution of this work not previously reported in the literature. Newly unveiled strong interactions between feed materials, geometry, and feed rate were discovered. Various combinations of inner nozzle retraction and slurry annular thickness were shown to be advantageous, depending on the goals of the injection system. The importance of either geometry variable for three-stream injectors has not been quantified until now. The predictive power of various modeling frameworks has been assessed for the first time. Axi-symmetric (AS) simulations can successfully predict absolute acoustic details; remarkably and surprisingly, AS simulations can also be used for directional indicators of bulk droplet size. This is an especially powerful revelation given the massive reduction in computational requirements for AS models. Reduced order 3-D models are required for better droplet size estimates. A relatively simple eddy-viscosity turbulent model seems to be adequate for predicting droplet sizes for three-stream injectors, in which the primary energy source is bulk pulsations. For larger two-stream systems (atomization energy is sourced in local shear layer instability development), however, a state-of-the-art hybrid model (newly implemented for this effort) appeared to be necessary to capture the resulting droplet scales. Lastly, droplet size and characteristic flow length scale predictions for two open literature non-Newtonian liquid atomizers were made available. / Ph. D.

Rotordynamic instability is present in most or all automotive turbochargers. High subsynchronous amplitudes can cause a variety of problems in areas such as mechanical failures, emissions regulations and rotor design. Self-excited vibrations from sources of damping can lock in at lateral natural frequencies causing dangerously high vibration levels. The resulting high-amplitude conical and bending modes can be reduced in order to achieve a more robust system. This research focuses on the relationship between synchronous and subsynchronous amplitude levels. It is theorized that an increase in unbalance could cause a reduction in subsynchronous vibration amplitudes. Through the use of a custom turbocharger, a series of unbalances were applied to both the turbine and compressor wheels and the resulting amplitudes were recorded off a modified compressor nut. The resulting data were reduced and are presented at the end of this paper. / Master of Science

The topic of this thesis is about experimental study of phenomena which are associated with light propagation in nonlinear dielectric media. In the first part of this work, we study experimentally the snake instability of the bright soliton stripe of the (2+1)-dimensional hyperbolic nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The instability is observed, through spectral measurements, on spatially extended femtosecond pulses propagating in a normally dispersive self-defocusing semiconductor planar waveguide. The second part of this thesis is about light propagation in nonlinear periodic media. We experimentally observe a stationary spatial gap (or Bragg) soliton in a periodic semiconductor planar waveguide. Based on the interference pattern of the soliton beam, we measure the power parameter of the soliton which is related to the position of the spatial spectrum in the linear band gap. Cette thèse de doctorat a pour sujet l’étude expérimentale de phénomènes associés à la propagation de la lumière dans les milieux diélectriques non linéaires. La première partie porte sur la démonstration expérimentale de l’instabilité serpentine d’une bande solitonique dans un système décrit par une équation de Schrödinger non linéaire à (2+1)-dimensions. L’instabilité est observée sur base de mesures du spectre spatial ainsi que du profil spatio-fréquentiel d’une impulsion femtoseconde après propagation dans un guide plan semi-conducteur qui présente une dispersion normale et une non-linéarité défocalisante. Le second thème abordé concerne la propagation de la lumière dans les milieux non linéaires périodiques. Les expériences réalisées ont montré l’existence du soliton de Bragg spatial stationnaire sous forme de faisceaux se propageant dans des guides plans semi-conducteurs périodiquement gravés. Sur base du profil de la distribution modale en intensité du faisceau soliton, il a été possible de mesurer le paramètre de puissance du soliton de Bragg qui détermine la position du spectre spatial dans la bande interdite linéaire.

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published_or_final_version / abstract / Orthopaedics and Traumatology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy