The Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM) instability is numerically investigated on an unperturbed interface subjected to a diffracted convergent shock created by diffracting an initially cylindrical shock over a rigid cylinder. Four gas interfaces are considered with Atwood number ranging from 0.18 to 0.67. Results indicate that the diffracted convergent shock increases its strength gradually and reduces its amplitude quickly when it propagates towards the convergence centre. After the strike of the diffracted convergent shock, the initially unperturbed interface deforms with a bulge structure at the centre and two interface steps at both sides, which can be ascribed to the non-uniformity of the pressure distribution behind the diffracted convergent shock. With the decrease of Atwood number, the bulge structure becomes more pronounced. Quantitatively, the interface amplitude experiences a fast but short growing stage and then enters a linear stage. A good collapse of the dimensionless amplitude is found for all cases, which indicates a weak dependence of the growth rate on Atwood number in the deformed shock-induced RM instability. Then the impulsive theory is modified by eliminating the Atwood number and considering the geometry convergence, which well predicts the amplitude growth for the deformed shock-induced RM instability. Finally, the underlying mechanism is decoupled into three parts, and it is found that both the impulsive pressure perturbation and the geometry convergence promote the growth of interface perturbation while the continuous pressure perturbation inhibits the growth. As the Atwood number decreases, the impulsive perturbation plays an increasingly important role, which suggests that the impulsive perturbation dominates the deformed shock-induced RM instability at the linear stage.

We present results of numerical experiments performed to evaluate the effects of the material interface supporting wire grid on the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability (RMI). An air-SF6 interface initially perturbed sinusoidally supported on a number of solid circular cylinders. These cylinders are introduced along the interface to mimic the presence of the grid thin wires. The resulted mixing and growth rate of the perturbation in the presence and absence of the supporting grid were analyzed and validated with experimental measurements. The small scales perturbation imposed by the cylinders are around two orders of magnitude smaller than the interface sinusoidal perturbation wavelength requiring the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) to adequately resolve small scale features. Furthermore, an embedded boundary technique is used to handle the complex geometry stemming from the presence of these multiple. A multi-fluid formulation is utilized to form a multi-gas species interface and compute the gas mixture properties.

We present wall-resolved large-eddy simulations (LES) of flow over a smooth-wall circular cylinder up to , where is Reynolds number based on the cylinder diameter and the free-stream speed . The stretched-vortex subgrid-scale (SGS) model is used in the entire simulation domain. For the sub-critical regime, six cases are implemented with . Results are compared with experimental data for both the wall-pressure-coefficient distribution on the cylinder surface, which dominates the drag coefficient, and the skin-friction coefficient, which clearly correlates with the separation behaviour. In the super-critical regime, LES for three values of are carried out at different resolutions. The drag-crisis phenomenon is well captured. For lower resolution, numerical discretization fluctuations are sufficient to stimulate transition, while for higher resolution, an applied boundary-layer perturbation is found to be necessary to stimulate transition. Large-eddy simulation results at , with a mesh of , agree well with the classic experimental measurements of Achenbach (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 34, 1968, pp. 625-639) especially for the skin-friction coefficient, where a spike is produced by the laminar-turbulent transition on the top of a prior separation bubble. We document the properties of the attached-flow boundary layer on the cylinder surface as these vary with . Within the separated portion of the flow, mean-flow separation-reattachment bubbles are observed at some values of , with separation characteristics that are consistent with experimental observations. Time sequences of instantaneous surface portraits of vector skin-friction trajectory fields indicate that the unsteady counterpart of a mean-flow separation-reattachment bubble corresponds to the formation of local flow-reattachment cells, visible as coherent bundles of diverging surface streamlines.

We present an embedded ghost-fluid method for numerical solutions of the compressible Navier Stokes (CNS) equations in arbitrary complex domains. The PDE multidimensional extrapolation approach of Aslam [1] is used to reconstruct the solution in the ghost-fluid regions and impose boundary conditions at the fluid-solid interface. The CNS equations are numerically solved by the second order multidimensional upwind method of Colella [2] and Saltzman [3]. Block-structured adaptive mesh refinement implemented under the Chombo framework is utilized to reduce the computational cost while keeping high-resolution mesh around the embedded boundary and regions of high gradient solutions. Numerical examples with different Reynolds numbers for low and high Mach number flow will be presented. We compare our simulation results with other reported experimental and computational results. The significance and advantages of our implementation, which revolve around balancing between the solution accuracy and implementation difficulties, are briefly discussed as well. © 2016 Trans Tech Publications.

We perform two-dimensional unsteady Navier-Stokes simulation and global linear stability analysis of flow past a heated circular cylinder to investigate the effect of aided buoyancy on the stabilization of the flow. The Reynolds number of the incoming flow is fixed at 100, and the Richardson number characterizing the buoyancy is varied from 0.00 (buoyancy-free case) to 0.10 at which the flow is still unsteady. We investigate the effect of aided buoyancy in stabilizing the wake flow, identify the temporal and spatial characteristics of the growth of the perturbation, and quantify the contributions from various terms comprising the perturbed kinetic energy budget. Numerical results reveal that the increasing Ri decreases the fluctuation magnitude of the characteristic quantities monotonically, and the momentum deficit in the wake flow decays rapidly so that the flow velocity recovers to that of the free-stream; the strain on the wake flow is reduced in the region where the perturbation is the most greatly amplified. Global stability analysis shows that the temporal growth rate of the perturbation decreases monotonically with Ri, reflecting the stabilization of the flow due to aided buoyancy. The perturbation grows most significantly in the free shear layer separated from the cylinder. As Ri increases, the location of maximum perturbation growth moves closer to the cylinder and the perturbation decays more rapidly in the far wake. The introduction of the aided buoyancy alters the base flow, and destabilizes the near wake shear layer mainly through the strain-induced transfer term and the pressure term of the perturbed kinetic energy, whereas the flow is stabilized in the far wake as the strain is alleviated. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

© 2015 Cambridge University Press. We present large-eddy simulations (LES) of separation and reattachment of a flat-plate turbulent boundary-layer flow. Instead of resolving the near wall region, we develop a two-dimensional virtual wall model which can calculate the time- and space-dependent skin-friction vector field at the wall, at the resolved scale. By combining the virtual-wall model with the stretched-vortex subgrid-scale (SGS) model, we construct a self-consistent framework for the LES of separating and reattaching turbulent wall-bounded flows at large Reynolds numbers. The present LES methodology is applied to two different experimental flows designed to produce separation/reattachment of a flat-plate turbulent boundary layer at medium Reynolds number Reθ based on the momentum boundary-layer thickness θ. Comparison with data from the first case at demonstrates the present capability for accurate calculation of the variation, with the streamwise co-ordinate up to separation, of the skin friction coefficient, Reθ, the boundary-layer shape factor and a non-dimensional pressure-gradient parameter. Additionally the main large-scale features of the separation bubble, including the mean streamwise velocity profiles, show good agreement with experiment. At the larger Reθ = 11000 of the second case, the LES provides good postdiction of the measured skin-friction variation along the whole streamwise extent of the experiment, consisting of a very strong adverse pressure gradient leading to separation within the separation bubble itself, and in the recovering or reattachment region of strongly-favourable pressure gradient. Overall, the present two-dimensional wall model used in LES appears to be capable of capturing the quantitative features of a separation-reattachment turbulent boundary-layer flow at low to moderately large Reynolds numbers.