Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: George Em Karniadakis. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-175). Also available online.

The nonlinear interactions between a fundamental instability mode and both its harmonics and the changing mean flow are studied using the weakly nonlinear stability theory of Stuart and Watson, and numerical solutions of coupled nonlinear partial differential equations. The first part of this work focuses on incompressible cold (or isothermal; constant temperature throughout) mixing layers, and for these, the first and second Landau constants are calculated as functions of wavenumber and Reynolds number. It is found that the dominant contribution to the Landau constants arises from the mean flow changes and not from the higher harmonics. In order to establish the range of validity of the weakly nonlinear theory, the weakly nonlinear and numerical solutions are compared and the limitation of each is discussed. At small amplitudes and at low-to-moderate Reynolds numbers, the two results compare well in describing the saturation of the fundamental, the distortion of the mean flow, and the initial stages of vorticity roll-up. At larger amplitudes, the interaction between the fundamental, second harmonic, and the mean flow is strongly nonlinear and the numerical solution predicts flow oscillations, whereas the weakly nonlinear theory yields saturation. Beyond the region of exponential growth, the instability waves evolve into a periodic array of vortices. In the second part of this work, the weakly nonlinear theory is extended to heated (or nonisothermal mean temperature distribution) subsonic round jets where quadratic and cubic nonlinear interactions are present, and the Landau constants also depend on jet temperature ratio, Mach number and azimuthal mode number. Under exponential growth and nonlinear saturation, it is found that heating and compressibility suppress the growth of instability waves, that the first azimuthal mode is the dominant instability mode, and that the weakly nonlinear solution describes the early stages of the roll-up of an axisymmetric shear layer. The receptivity of a typical jet flow to pulse type input disturbances is also studied by solving the initial value problem and then examining the behavior of the long-time solution. The excitation produces a wave packet which consists of a few oscillations and is convected downstream by the mean flow. The magnitude of the disturbance in the jet depends on the location of the excitation and there is an optimum position at which little energy input will produce large perturbations. It is found that in order to generate the largest perturbations at any point in the jet, the disturbance should be deposited into the flow at a point where the phase velocity of the most amplified wave equals the fluid velocity (of the base flow).

Unsteady heat transfer by natural convection in a closed square cavity is investigated numerically. A new finite-volume approach is developed and applied to the two-dimensional continuity, vorticity, and energy equations. The variation of the field variables is approximated by bi-quadratic interpolation formulas over the space occupied by the finite volume and the region surrounding it. These are used in the integral conservation laws for energy, vorticity and mass. The convective transport is modelled using a new upstream-weighting approach which uses volume averages for the vorticity and the energy transported across the boundaries of the finite volume. The weighting is dependent on the skewness of the velocity field to the surfaces of the finite volume as well as its strength. It is adaptive to local flow conditions. The velocities are obtained from the application of the velocity induction law. Use is made of an image system for the free vorticity of fluid. In this way, the no-penetration condition is enforced at the cavity boundaries, but at the same time it may allow a slip condition to exist. This is not permitted in a viscous flow analysis, and the slip velocity is reduced to zero by the production of free vorticity at the boundaries. Two test cases are treated which have exact solutions. The first is not new and involves a rotating shaft. The errors are less than.06% for this case. The second case is new and involves convection past a source and sink. The maximum error is 2.3%. For both test cases, the maximum error occurs at moderate values of the cell Peclet number and diminishes at the extreme low and high values. The time-development of the profiles of the vorticity, horizontal velocity, and temperature is examined at different locations within the cavity for Rayleigh numbers equal to 10³, 10⁴, and 10⁵. For these calculations, a 21 x 21 grid was used. The flow is found to approach a steady-state condition. The steady-state results are compared with a benchmark solution. In general, the agreement is excellent. The discrepancy is found to be less than 2% for the vast majority of the results for this relatively coarse grid.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wyoming, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 28, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

This research presents a new, more efficient computational scheme for complex periodic flows, and brings forward two novel ideas. The first consists in the use of a Fourier space time representation in conjunction with a high-order spatial discretization. The second is based on the efficient treatment of the resulting set of equations using a fast, implicit solver. This thesis describes the formulation and implementation of the proposed framework. Firstly, a high-order spectral difference scheme for the Euler equations is introduced. Secondly, the non-linear frequency domain method resolving the unsteady behavior of the flow is discussed. Thirdly, a mathematical and experimental validation of the proposed algorithm is carried out. Numerical experiments performed in this thesis suggest that the methodology could be an attractive new avenue for large scale time-dependent problems, alleviating the computational cost traditionally associated with such simulations.

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