In an experiment on a turbulent jet, we detect interfacial turbulent layers in a frame that moves, on average, along with the turbulent-nonturbulent interface. This significantly prolongs the observation time of scalar and velocity structures and enables the measurement of two types of Lagrangian coherent structures. One structure, the finite-time Lyapunov field (FTLE), quantifies advective transport barriers of fluid parcels while the other structure highlights barriers of diffusive momentum transport. These two complementary structures depend on large-and small-scale motion and are therefore associated with the growth of the turbulent region through engulfment or nibbling, respectively. We detect the turbulent-nonturbulent interface from cluster analysis, where we divide the measured scalar field into four clusters. Not only the turbulent-nonturbulent interface can be found this way, but also the next, internal, turbulent-turbulent interface. Conditional averages show that these interfaces are correlated with barriers of advective and diffusive transport when the Lagrangian integration time is smaller than the integral timescale. Diffusive structures decorrelate faster since they have a smaller timescale. Conditional averages of these structures at internal turbulent-turbulent interfaces show the same pattern with a more pronounced jump at the interface indicative of a shear layer. This is quite an unexpected outcome, as the internal interface is now defined not by the presence or absence of vorticity, but by conditional vorticity corresponding to two uniform concentration zones. The long-time diffusive momentum flux along Lagrangian paths represents the growth of the turbulent flow into the irrotational domain, a direct demonstration of nibbling. The diffusive flux parallel to the turbulent-nonturbulent interface appears to be concentrated in a diffusive superlayer whose width is comparable with the Taylor microscale, which is relatively invariant in time.

Interferometric particle imaging (IPI) is used to measure both the size distribution and concentration of microbubbles (with a diameter less than 100 micron) in water. Using a new method for calibration makes it possible to obtain quantitative results for the concentration of microbubbles. The results are validated using imaging with a long-range microscope shadowgraph (LMS). Estimates of the size distribution and concentration from both IPI and LMS agree within uncertainty limits. The relative uncertainty in the IPI concentration estimation is about 10% and is mostly due to the finite number of detected bubbles. It is shown that the performance of the bubble-image detection algorithm needs to be quantified to obtain a reliable estimate of the concentration obtained with IPI.

Fluids at supercritical pressures exhibit large variations in density near the pseudo-critical line, such that buoyancy plays a crucial role in their fluid dynamics. Here, we experimentally investigate heat transfer and turbulence in horizontal hydrodynamically developed channel flows of carbon dioxide at 88.5 bar and 32.6∘C, heated at either the top or bottom surface to induce a strong vertical density gradient. In order to visualise the flow and evaluate its heat transfer, shadowgraphy is used concurrently with surface temperature measurements. With moderate heating, the flow is found to strongly stratify for both heating configurations, with bulk Richardson numbers Ri reaching up to 100. When the carbon dioxide is heated from the bottom upwards, the resulting unstably stratified flow is found to be dominated by the increasingly prevalent secondary motion of thermal plumes, enhancing vertical mixing and progressively improving heat transfer compared with a neutrally buoyant setting. Conversely, stable stratification, induced by heating from the top, suppresses the vertical motion, leading to deteriorated heat transfer that becomes invariant to the Reynolds number. The optical results provide novel insights into the complex dynamics of the directionally dependent heat transfer in the near-pseudo-critical region. These insights contribute to the reliable design of heat exchangers with highly property-variant fluids, which are critical for the decarbonisation of power and industrial heat. However, the results also highlight the need for further progress in the development of experimental techniques to generate reliable reference data for a broader range of non-ideal supercritical conditions.

This paper presents a microfluidic approach that dynamically controls the hydrodynamic flow and the streamlines to enable complex multi-particle manipulations within a single device. The approach combines the design of a flow-through microfluidic Hele-Shaw flow cell together with an optimization procedure to find a priori optimal particle pathlines, and an effective proportional-integral-derivative (PID) feedback controller to provide real-time control over the particle manipulations. In the device, particles are manipulated with hydrodynamic forces, by using a uniform flow through the flow cell and three inlets perpendicular to the flow cell. The streamlines within the device are manipulated by injecting or extracting fluid through the three inlets. The Hele-Shaw geometry allows a fast and accurate prediction of the particle trajectory, meaning only a simple PID controller is required to correct for particle deviations. The robustness of this approach is demonstrated by implementing multiple functions within the device, including particle trapping, particle sorting, particle separation, and assembly. The real-time control procedure affords accurate particle manipulation, with a maximum error on the order of the diameter of the particle.

This paper explores integrating artificial intelligence (AI) segmentation models, particularly the Segment Anything Model (SAM), into fluid mechanics experiments. SAM’s architecture, comprising an image encoder, prompt encoder, and mask decoder, is investigated for its application in detecting and segmenting objects and flow structures. Additionally, we explore the integration of natural language prompts, such as BERT, to enhance SAM’s performance in segmenting specific objects. Through case studies, we found that SAM is robust in object detection in fluid experiments. However, segmentations related to flow properties, such as scalar turbulence and bubbly flows, require fine-tuning. To facilitate the application, we have established a repository (https://github.com/AliRKhojasteh/Flow_segmentation) where models and usage examples can be accessed.

Cavitation occurs when the local pressure, induced by high local velocities, drops below the vapor pressure, leading to the formation of vapor bubbles. The subsequent collapse of these bubbles can cause noise, erosion, and vibrations. Recent studies show that cavitation is sensitive to water quality, i.e., the nuclei populations, the chemical composition of water, and the presence of particles. Motivated by investigating the effects of water quality on cavitation, experiments are performed in a dedicated experimental facility. This consists in two co-axial disks that are initially at rest and mutually in contact, in a tank filled with water. The fast diverging movement of the top disk with respect to the bottom one produces a jet flow inside the gap between the disks, which leads to the formation of two counter-rotating vortices. The local pressure drop induced by high flow velocities leads to a phase change. To characterize the phenomenon, two optical techniques are applied, i.e., shadowgraphy and particle image velocimetry (PIV). In performing PIV reconstruction, the sum of correlation enhances the spatial resolution of the velocity vector fields. The pressure field in the region where the vortices occur is obtained from velocity data. The water quality effects on cavitation are investigated by adding salt and using water with an abundance of nuclei inside the tank.

Correction to: Scientific Reportshttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-68971-x, published online 13 August 2024 In the original version of this Article a previous rendition of Figure 2B, Figure 4 and Figure 5D was published. The original Figure 2, 4 and 5 and accompanying legends appear below. (Figure presented.) (Figure presented.) (Figure presented.) (A) Representative bubble dynamics for different channel geometries. (B) Universal motion of bubbles within channels with different size, shape and length. The dashed line represents the developed theory, Eq. (2). The marker colors represent the hydraulic diameters (d_h), the shapes represent the cross-section and the facecolor represent the lengths (L). The graphical marker symbols and colors established here are followed throughout this article. The black arrow represents the region of deviation(s) from the expected dynamics. The threshold laser energy absorbed for bubble formation estimated from experiments (E_th,exp) against theory (E_th,theory) presented in Eq. (5). (A,B) Representative dynamic bubble size curves illustrating the emergence of instabilities. The zones of the instabilities are highlighted using a shaded rectangular area. The arrows represent if the instabilities occur before or after X_max. (A) Illustrates the experimental data for different d_h with similar oscillation time. The instabilities emerge with increasing d_h. (B) Illustrates the data for d_h = 200 µm with increasing laser energies. The instabilities disappear with increasing E_abs. (C) Flow stability diagram with the transition line at W_o = 734. The markers represent the experiments and the lines represent the analytical estimate. The numbers correspond to the channel hydraulic diameters (in µm) with the dashed and solid lines representing the channel lengths L = 25 and 50 mm, respectively. (D) The dimensionless convective timescale against the L/d_h aspect ratio. The partition line is a linear relation between the x and y axes with 45 × 10⁻⁶ as the slope and the origin as the intercept. The original Article has been corrected.

This study investigates the turbulent/non-turbulent interface (TNTI) in self-similar turbulent axisymmetric jet flows, focusing on a novel approach named ’move with the flow’ where the image acquisition is space-based rather than time-based. Experiments were conducted at three different Reynolds numbers (9000, 12000, and 31000), utilizing particle image velocimetry (PIV) and laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) techniques. The core of this research was developing a traverse system specifically designed to follow the evolving flow structures at the TNTI synchronously. We succeeded in tracking large-scale events in TNTI from creation to dissolution.

Oscillatory flow in confined spaces is central to understanding physiological flows and rational design of synthetic periodic-actuation based micromachines. Using theory and experiments on oscillating flows generated through a laser-induced cavitation bubble, we associate the dynamic bubble size (fluid velocity) and bubble lifetime to the laser energy supplied—a control parameter in experiments. Employing different channel cross-section shapes, sizes and lengths, we demonstrate the characteristic scales for velocity, time and energy to depend solely on the channel geometry. Contrary to the generally assumed absence of instability in low Reynolds number flows (<1000), we report a momentary flow distortion that originates due to the boundary layer separation near channel walls during flow deceleration. The emergence of distorted laminar states is characterized using two stages. First the conditions for the onset of instabilities is analyzed using the Reynolds number and Womersley number for oscillating flows. Second the growth and the ability of an instability to prevail is analyzed using the convective time scale of the flow. Our findings inform rational design of microsystems leveraging pulsatile flows via cavitation-powered microactuation.

We report results on the instantaneous drag force on plates that are accelerated in a direction normal to the plate surface, which show that this force scales with the square root of the acceleration. This is associated with the generation and advection of vorticity at the plate surface. A new scaling law is presented for the drag force on accelerating plates, based on the history force for unsteady flow. This scaling avoids previous inconsistencies in using added mass forces in the description of forces on accelerating plates.

Measurements were conducted in the fully developed turbulent flow in a pipe with internal diameter D at a Reynolds number of Re _D= 1.6 × 10 ⁵ . The pipe walls were equipped with regularly spaced square ribs of relative height h/ D= 0.154 , while the pitch-to-roughness height was varied between p/ h= 1.67 and p/ h= 6.67 . The measurements include mean velocity components, Reynolds shear and normal stresses and pressure losses. It is investigated whether the effects of the large roughness on the (time and axially averaged) velocity profile can be described by the classical rough-wall formulation by allowing the value of the von Kármán constant to deviate from its standard value of 0.41.

Abstract: A novel experimental imaging-based method is presented for the non-intrusive determination of shock wave characteristics (i.e. shock wave speed and magnitude, and shock-induced liquid velocity) in a bubbly flow solely from gas bubble velocities. Shock wave speeds are estimated by the relative motion between gas bubbles at two locations by splitting the camera field-of-view using a mirror construction, increasing the dynamic spatial range of the measurement system. Although gas bubbles have in general poor tracing properties of the local fluid velocity, capturing the relative dynamics provides accurate estimates for the shock wave properties. This proposed imaging-based method does not require pressure transducers, the addition of tracer particles, or volumetric reconstruction of the gas bubbles. The shock wave magnitude and shock-induced liquid velocity are computed with a hydrodynamic model, which only requires non-intrusively measured variables as input. Two reference measurements, based on pressure transducers and the liquid velocity field by particle image velocimetry, show that the proposed method provides reliable estimates for the shock wave front speed and the shock-induced liquid velocity within the experimental range of 70 < U_s< 400 m/s. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].

In our experiment a vortical flow behind a traveling plate turns into turbulence. By exactly repeating this experiment 42 times with a robot, we study the statistics of this transition. In each realization the fate of the flow is followed over 1.7 s when the plate travels with a constant velocity. It suddenly turns turbulent at a scaled traveled distance of x∗≈5.5. We register the vorticity in a plane that divides the plate perpendicularly. We introduce an original Lagrangian measure of variability between the experiment realizations. The finite-time Lyapunov exponent field of a single experiment predicts this variability; thus we confirm ergodicity. Apart from pointwise measures, yielding a distribution over the field of view, we study the statistics of the circulation computed over the upper and lower half of the domain. The almost perfect symmetry both of the mean and of the fluctuations points to their origin as the fluctuating vortex ring trailing behind the plate. During the initial phase long-time correlations exist in the flow, but they cease once the flow turns turbulent. By ordering our repeated experiments we find that extreme circulations are preceded by circulations that are larger than the median.

In this paper are presented PIV measurements of turbulent pipe flow at bulk Reynolds numbers Re _D between 3.4 × 10 ⁵ and 6.9 × 10 ⁵ . So-called single-pixel correlation is applied that yields a superior spatial resolution that is slightly larger than the equivalent size of a pixel in the flow. The location and shape of the averaged correlation peak give the mean velocity and normal and Reynolds stresses. A novel aspect of the single-pixel correlation approach is the extension to determine the 2-point spatial correlation of the velocity fluctuations and the spectrum of the longitudinal velocity fluctuations. Detailed results are presented for Re _D = 4.98 × 10 ⁵ , corresponding to a shear Reynolds number Re _τ = 10.3 × 10 ³ , with a spatial resolution in wall units of Δy⁺ = 19.

The principal aim of the work presented here is to investigate and demonstrate that a forward tilted rowing blade would result in a more efficient and effective motion of the blade through the water that would result in a higher boat speed when an equal input power is provided. A 1:5 scaled rowing boat is used to determine the performance of rowing blades with different sizes and blade angles. This is used to validate the results of a previous study where the optimal blade angle of 15 (Formula presented.) with respect to the oar shaft was determined (1). The input power and speed of the rowing boat can be compared between original and modified oar blades. Measurements in a towing tank demonstrate that a modified rowing blade result in faster rowing by 0.4% at the same input power. Maintaining the same stroke rate, the improvement of the blade efficiency is compensated by using a 4–6% increased blade area to yield the same input power.

The interaction between a turbulent boundary layer flow and compliant surfaces is investigated experimentally. Three viscoelastic coatings with different material stiffnesses are used to identify the general surface response to the turbulent flow conditions. For the softest coating, the global force measurements show two obvious regimes of interaction with an indicated transition at Ub/Ct∼3.5, where Ub is the bulk flow velocity and Ct is the coating shear velocity. The one-way coupled regime shows friction values comparable to those of the rigid wall, while the two-way coupled regime indicate a significant increase in fluid friction. Within the one-way coupled regime for Ub/Ct>1.2, the flow measurements show a low level of two-way coupling represented by the change of the velocity profile as well as the increase in the Reynolds stresses in the near-wall region. This is supported by the surface deformation measurements. Initially, the turbulent flow structures induce only an imprint on the coating surface, while a change in surface response occurs when the surface wave propagation velocity cw equals the shear wave velocity of the coating Ct (i.e. cw/Ct∼1). Above Ub/Ct>1.2, a growth in wavelength is observed with increasing flow velocity, most probably due to the surface wave formation generated downstream the pressure features of the flow. The surface response is stable and correlates with the high-intensity turbulent pressure fluctuations in the turbulent boundary layer, with a wave propagation velocity cw∼0.7–0.8Ub. Within the two-way coupled regime, additional fluid motions and a downward shift in the logarithmic region of the velocity profile are observed due to substantial surface deformation and confirm the frictional drag increase. Another type of surface response is initiated by phase-lag instability in combination with surface undulations that start to protrude the viscous sublayer, where the propagation velocity of surface wave trains is cw∼0.17–0.18Ub.

We present an experimental study on the gas flow field development over a plunging breaking wave prior to impact on a vertical wall. The variability of wave impact pressure over repeated measurements is well known (Bagnold, 1939). The formation of instabilities on the wave crest are postulated to be the main source of impact pressure variability (Dias and Ghidaglia, 2018). However, the mechanism that results in wave impact pressure variability and the influence of the gas phase in particular are relatively unknown. The velocity field of the gas phase is measured with particle image velocimetry, while simultaneously the local free surface is determined with a stereo-planar laser-induced fluorescence technique. The bulk velocity between the wave crest tip and the impact wall deviates from the mass conservation estimate based on the velocity profile between the wave crest and the impact wall. This is caused by a significant increase of the local gas velocity near the wave crest tip. The non-uniformities in the seeding concentration accumulate near the wave crest tip and reduce the accuracy of the velocity measurements. However, the bulk velocity estimate is significantly improved with a fit of the velocity profile that is based on a potential flow over a bluff body. Additionally, the development of vortex is observed and quantified for two typical measurements with either a disturbance on the wave crest or a smooth wave crest. The circulation development is comparable to the formation and separation of a vortex ring, which results in a saturated vortex that separates from the wave crest (Gharib et al., 1998). Furthermore, the impact location of the wave tip is altered by the formation of secondary vortices. The secondary vortex enhances the lift locally and alters the trajectory of the wave crest tip, which may result in additional variability of the wave impact pressure.

Following their inception, vortex cavities emanating from stationary wing tips in cavitation tunnels are often observed to grow. These effects are usually attributed to the free and dissolved non-condensable gases in the liquid. However, a detailed mechanism for the cavity's growth is not known. Consequently, the repeatability of vortex cavitation in different flow facilities is generally poor. The main aim of our work is to highlight the contribution of dissolved gases to the cavity's growth, hence addressing water-quality influence in nuclei-depleted conditions. A model is provided for a steady-state diffusion-driven mechanism that transports dissolved gases from the surrounding liquid into the vortex cavitation through a diffusion layer located outside its interface. The model results show that the cavity grows uncontrollably when the dissolved gas concentration in the liquid is saturated or oversaturated relative to its saturation level at ambient pressure conditions (c_∞/c_sat≥1). In addition, it is shown that stable cavity sizes can be achieved when the c_∞/c_sat<1. The predictions in the range 1.04≤c_∞/c_sat≤1.33 are compared with experimental data and infer either of the two geometries for the diffusion layer: (i) a 5μm thin film approximated by a hollow cylinder around the cavity, or (ii) one that evolves like a boundary layer along the axis of the cavity. For the latter modeling approach, the observed length of the cavity was much larger than that required to match with the experimental data, skewing a preference to the thin-film assumption. In the undersaturated regime (c_∞/c_sat=0.14 & 0.39), the proposed model has a qualitative agreement with the data of Briançon-Marjollet and Merle (1996).

We present results on the instantaneous drag force acting on a rectangular plate that accelerates in a direction normal to the plate surface. Conventionally the drag force on an accelerating object is divided into a steady state term and an added mass term, which can both be time-dependent. However, for prolonged accelerations this theory does not hold. This paper shows a different method to scale the forces that act on an accelerating plate. We base this scaling on an experiment in which a plate was accelerated from rest through a water tank using an industrial gantry robot. In this experiment both the forces that act on the plate and the velocity fields, using PIV, were measured for a large range of accelerations and final velocities. The vorticity fields, obtained from the velocity fields, qualitatively show the same process of vortex formation across the whole range of accelerations. However, the instantaneous drag force and total circulation clearly differ for different accelerations. Shortly after the acceleration period ends, and the plate reaches its final velocity, the drag force and the circulation for different accelerations coincide and do not depend on the acceleration history anymore. We divided the force into two components: the steady state force, which can be scaled by using the drag coefficient, and an instationary force, for which we found a new scaling. This scaling, which involves the square root of both the velocity and the acceleration, can predict the instationary force significantly better than the conventional scaling.