arXiv subjects

Kai Leong Chong

Publications and source records attributed to Kai Leong Chong.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

An efficient phase-field method for turbulent multiphase flows

With the aim of efficiently simulating three-dimensional multiphase turbulent flows with a phase-field method, we propose a new discretization scheme for the biharmonic term (the 4th-order derivative term) of the Cahn-Hilliard equation. This novel scheme can significantly reduce the computational cost while retaining the same accuracy as the original procedure. Our phase-field method is built on top of a direct numerical simulation solver, named AFiD (www.afid.eu) and open-sourced by our research group. It relies on a pencil distributed parallel strategy and a FFT-based Poisson solver. To deal with large density ratios between the two phases, a pressure split method [1] has been applied to the Poisson solver. To further reduce computational costs, we implement a multiple-resolution algorithm which decouples the discretizations for the Navier-Stokes equations and the scalar equation: while a stretched wall-resolving grid is used for the Navier-Stokes equations, for the Cahn-Hilliard equation we use a fine uniform mesh. The present method shows excellent computational performance for large-scale computation: on meshes up to 8 billion nodes and 3072 CPU cores, a multiphase flow needs only slightly less than 1.5 times the CPU time of the single-phase flow solver on the same grid. The present method is validated by comparing the results to previous studies for the cases of drop deformation in shear flow, including the convergence test with mesh refinement, and breakup of a rising buoyant bubble with density ratio up to 1000. Finally, we simulate the breakup of a big drop and the coalescence of O(10^3) drops in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection at a Rayleigh number of $10^8$, observing good agreement with theoretical results.

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arXiv2021

Instabilities driven by diffusio-phoretic flow on catalytic surfaces

We theoretically and numerically investigate the instabilities driven by diffusiophoretic flow, caused by a solutal concentration gradient along a reacting surface. The important control parameter is the Peclet number Pe, which quantifies the ratio of the solutal advection rate to the diffusion rate. First, we study the diffusiophoretic flow on a catalytic plane in two dimensions. From a linear stability analysis, we obtain that for Pe larger than 8pi, mass transport by convection overtakes that by diffusion, and a symmetry-breaking mode arises, which is consistent with numerical results. For even larger Pe, non-linear terms become important. For Pe larger than 16pi, multiple concentration plumes are emitted from the catalytic plane, which eventually merges into a single larger one. When Pe is even larger, there are continuous emissions and merging events of the concentration plumes. This newly-found flow state reflects the non-linear saturation of the system. The critical Peclet number for the transition to this state depends on Schmidt number Sc. In the second part of the paper, we conduct three-dimensional simulations for spherical catalytic particles, and beyond a critical Peclet number again find continuous plume emission and plume merging, now leading to chaotic motion of the phoretic particle. Our results thus help to understand the experimentally observed chaotic motion of catalytic particles in the high Pe regime.

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arXiv2021

Periodic bouncing of a plasmonic bubble in a binary liquid by competing solutal and thermal Marangoni forces

The physicochemical hydrodynamics of bubbles and droplets out of equilibrium, in particular with phase transitions, displays surprisingly rich and often counterintuitive phenomena. Here we experimentally and theoretically study the nucleation and early evolution of plasmonic bubbles in a binary liquid consisting of water and ethanol. Remarkably, the submillimeter plasmonic bubble is found to be periodically attracted to and repelled from the nanoparticle-decorated substrate, with frequencies of around a few kHz. We identify the competition between solutal and thermal Marangoni forces as origin of the periodic bouncing. The former arises due to the selective vaporization of ethanol at the substrate's side of the bubble, leading to a solutal Marangoni flow towards the hot substrate, which pushes the bubble away. The latter arises due to the temperature gradient across the bubble, leading to a thermal Marangoni flow away from the substrate which sucks the bubble towards it. We study the dependence of the frequency of the bouncing phenomenon from the control parameters of the system, namely the ethanol fraction and the laser power for the plasmonic heating. Our findings can be generalized to boiling and electrolytically or catalytically generated bubbles in multicomponent liquids.

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arXiv2021

Optimal ventilation rate for effective displacement ventilation

Indoor ventilation is essential for a healthy and comfortable living environment. A key issue is to discharge anthropogenic air contamination such as CO2 gas or, more seriously, airborne respiratory droplets. Here, by employing direct numerical simulations, we study the mechanical displacement ventilation with the realistic range of air changes per hour (ACH) from 1 to 10. For this ventilation scheme, a cool lower zone is established beneath the warm upper zone with the interface height h depending on ACH. For weak ventilation, we find the scalings relation of the interface height h ~ ACH^{3/5}, as suggested by Hunt & Linden (Build. Environ., vol. 34, 1999, pp. 707-720). Also, the CO2 concentration decreases with ACH within this regime. However, for too strong ventilation, the interface height h becomes insensitive to ACH, and the CO2 concentration remains unchanged. Our results are in contrast to the general belief that stronger flow is more helpful to remove contaminants. We work out the physical mechanism governing the transition between the low ACH and the high ACH regimes. It is determined by the relative strength of the kinetic energy from the inflow, potential energy from the stably-stratified layers, and energy loss due to drag. Our findings provide a physics-based guideline to optimize displacement ventilation.

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arXiv2021

Universality in microdroplet nucleation during solvent exchange in Hele-Shaw like channels

Micro and nanodroplets have many important applications such as in drug delivery, liquid-liquid extraction, nanomaterial synthesis and cosmetics. A commonly used method to generate a large number of micro or nanodroplets in one simple step is solvent exchange (also called nanoprecipitation), in which a good solvent of the droplet phase is displaced by a poor one, generating an oversaturation pulse that leads to droplet nucleation. Despite its crucial importance, the droplet growth resulting from the oversaturation pulse in this ternary system is still poorly understood. We experimentally and theoretically study this growth in Hele-Shaw like channels by measuring the total volume of the oil droplets that nucleates out of it. In order to prevent the oversaturated oil from exiting the channel, we decorated some of the channels with a porous region in the middle. Solvent exchange is performed with various solution compositions, flow rates and channel geometries, and the measured droplets volume is found to increase with the Péclet number $Pe$ with an approximate effective power law $V\propto Pe^{0.50}$. A theoretical model is developed to account for this finding. With this model we can indeed explain the $V\propto Pe^{1/2}$ scaling, including the prefactor, which can collapse all data of the "porous" channels onto one universal curve, irrespective of channel geometry and composition of the mixtures. Our work provides a macroscopic approach to this bottom-up method of droplet generation and may guide further studies on oversaturation and nucleation in ternary systems.

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arXiv2021

Extended lifetime of respiratory droplets in a turbulent vapour puff and its implications on airborne disease transmission

To quantify the fate of respiratory droplets under different ambient relative humidities, direct numerical simulations of a typical respiratory event are performed. We found that, because small droplets (with initial diameter of 10um) are swept by turbulent eddies in the expelled humid puff, their lifetime gets extended by a factor of more than 30 times as compared to what is suggested by the classical picture by William F. Wells, for 50% relative humidity. With increasing ambient relative humidity the extension of the lifetimes of the small droplets further increases and goes up to around 150 times for 90% relative humidity, implying more than two meters advection range of the respiratory droplets within one second. Employing Lagrangian statistics, we demonstrate that the turbulent humid respiratory puff engulfs the small droplets, leading to many orders of magnitude increase in their lifetimes, implying that they can be transported much further during the respiratory events than the large ones. Our findings provide the starting points for larger parameter studies and may be instructive for developing strategies on optimizing ventilation and indoor humidity control. Such strategies are key in mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic in the present autumn and upcoming winter.

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arXiv2020

Two-layer Thermally Driven Turbulence: Mechanisms for Interface Breakup

It is commonly accepted that the breakup criteria of drops or bubbles in turbulence is governed by surface tension and inertia. However, also {\it{buoyancy}} can play an important role at breakup. In order to better understand this role, here we numerically study Rayleigh-Bénard convection for two immiscible fluid layers, in order to identify the effects of buoyancy on interface breakup. We explore the parameter space spanned by the Weber number $5\leq We \leq 5000$ (the ratio of inertia to surface tension) and the density ratio between the two fluids $0.001 \leq Λ\leq 1$, at fixed Rayleigh number $Ra=10^8$ and Prandtl number $Pr=1$. At low $We$, the interface undulates due to plumes. When $We$ is larger than a critical value, the interface eventually breaks up. Depending on $Λ$, two breakup types are observed: The first type occurs at small $Λ\ll 1$ (e.g. air-water systems) when local filament thicknesses exceed the Hinze length scale. The second, strikingly different, type occurs at large $Λ$ with roughly $0.5 < Λ\le 1$ (e.g. oil-water systems): The layers undergo a periodic overturning caused by buoyancy overwhelming surface tension. For both types the breakup criteria can be derived from force balance arguments and show good agreement with the numerical results.

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arXiv2020

Growth of respiratory droplets in cold and humid air

The ambient conditions surrounding liquid droplets determine their growth or shrinkage. However, the precise fate of a liquid droplet expelled from a respiratory puff as dictated by its surroundings and the puff itself has not yet been fully quantified. From the view of airborne disease transmission, such as SARS-CoV-2, knowledge of such dependencies are critical. Here we employ direct numerical simulations (DNS) of a turbulent respiratory vapour puff and account for the mass and temperature exchange with respiratory droplets and aerosols. In particular, we investigate how droplets respond to different ambient temperatures and relative humidity (RH) by tracking their Lagrangian statistics. We reveal and quantify that in cold and humid environments, as there the respiratory puff is supersaturated, expelled droplets can first experience significant growth, and only later followed by shrinkage, in contrast to the monotonic shrinkage of droplets as expected from the classical view by William F. Wells (1934). Indeed, cold and humid environments diminish the ability of air to hold water vapour, thus causing the respiratory vapour puff to super-saturate. Consequently, the super-saturated vapour field drives the growth of droplets that are caught and transported within the humid puff. To analytically predict the likelihood for droplet growth, we propose a model for the axial RH based on the assumption of a quasi-stationary jet. Our model correctly predicts super-saturated RH conditions and is in good quantitative agreement with our DNS. Our results culminate in a temperature-RH map that can be employed as an indicator for droplet growth or shrinkage.

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arXiv2020

Inverse centrifugal effect induced by collective motion of vortices in rotating turbulent convection

When a fluid system is subject to strong rotation, centrifugal fluid motion is expected, i.e., denser (lighter) fluid moves outward (inward) from (toward) the axis of rotation. Here we demonstrate, both experimentally and numerically, the existence of an unexpected outward motion of warm and lighter vortices in rotating turbulent convection. This anomalous vortex motion occurs under rapid rotations when the centrifugal buoyancy is sufficiently strong to induce a symmetry-breaking in the vorticity field, i.e., the vorticity of the cold anticyclones overrides that of the warm cyclones. We show that through hydrodynamic interactions the densely populated vortices can self-aggregate into coherent clusters and exhibit collective motion in this flow regime. Interestingly, the correlation of the vortex velocity fluctuations within a cluster is scale-free, with the correlation length being about 30% of the cluster length. Such long-range correlation leads to the collective outward motion of cyclones. Our study provides new understanding of vortex dynamics that are widely present in nature.

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arXiv2020

From Rayleigh-Bénard convection to porous-media convection: how porosity affects heat transfer and flow structure

We perform a numerical study of the heat transfer and flow structure of Rayleigh-Bénard (RB) convection in (in most cases regular) porous media, which are comprised of circular, solid obstacles located on a square lattice. This study is focused on the role of porosity $ϕ$ in the flow properties during the transition process from the traditional RB convection with $ϕ=1$ (so no obstacles included) to Darcy-type porous-media convection with $ϕ$ approaching 0. Simulations are carried out in a cell with unity aspect ratio, for the Rayleigh number $Ra$ from $10^5$ to $10^{10}$ and varying porosities $ϕ$, at a fixed Prandtl number $Pr=4.3$, and we restrict ourselves to the two dimensional case. For fixed $Ra$, the Nusselt number $Nu$ is found to vary non-monotonously as a function of $ϕ$; namely, with decreasing $ϕ$, it first increases, before it decreases for $ϕ$ approaching 0. The non-monotonous behaviour of $Nu(ϕ)$ originates from two competing effects of the porous structure on the heat transfer. On the one hand, the flow coherence is enhanced in the porous media, which is beneficial for the heat transfer. On the other hand, the convection is slowed down by the enhanced resistance due to the porous structure, leading to heat transfer reduction. For fixed $ϕ$, depending on $Ra$, two different heat transfer regimes are identified, with different effective power-law behaviours of $Nu$ vs $Ra$, namely, a steep one for low $Ra$ when viscosity dominates, and the standard classical one for large $Ra$. The scaling crossover occurs when the thermal boundary layer thickness and the pore scale are comparable. The influences of the porous structure on the temperature and velocity fluctuations, convective heat flux, and energy dissipation rates are analysed, further demonstrating the competing effects of the porous structure to enhance or reduce the heat transfer.

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arXiv2020

From zonal flow to convection rolls in Rayleigh-Bénard convection with free-slip plates

Rayleigh-Bénard (RB) convection with free-slip plates and horizontally periodic boundary conditions is investigated using direct numerical simulations. Two configurations are considered, one is two-dimension (2D) RB convection and the other one three-dimension (3D) RB convection with a rotating axis parallel to the plate. We explore the parameter range of Rayleigh numbers Ra from $10^7 to $10^9$ and Prandtl numbers $Pr$ from $1$ to $100$. We show that zonal flow, which was observed, for example, by Goluskin \emph{et al}. \emph{J. Fluid. Mech.} 759, 360-385 (2014) for $Γ=2$, is only stable when $Γ$ is smaller than a critical value, which depends on $Ra$ and $Pr$. With increasing $Γ$, we find a second regime in which both zonal flow and different convection roll states can be statistically stable. For even larger $Γ$, in a third regime, only convection roll states are statistically stable and zonal flow is not sustained. For the 3D simulations, we fix $Ra=10^7$ and $Pr=0.71$, and compare the flow for $Γ=8$ and $Γ= 16$. We demonstrate that with increasing aspect ratio $Γ$, zonal flow, which was observed for small $Γ=2π$ by von Hardenberg \emph{et al}. \emph{Phys. Rev. Lett.} 15, 134501 (2015), completely disappears for $Γ=16$. For such large $Γ$ only convection roll states are statistically stable. In between, here for medium aspect ratio $Γ= 8$, the convection roll state and the zonal flow state are both statistically stable. What state is taken depends on the initial conditions, similarly as we found for the 2D case.

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arXiv2020

Periodically modulated thermal convection

Many natural and industrial turbulent flows are subjected to time-dependent boundary conditions. Despite being ubiquitous, the influence of temporal modulations (with frequency $f$) on global transport properties has hardly been studied. Here, we perform numerical simulations of Rayleigh-Bénard (RB) convection with time periodic modulation in the temperature boundary condition and report how this modulation can lead to a significant heat flux (Nusselt number $\rm{Nu}$) enhancement. Using the concept of Stokes thermal boundary layer, we can explain the onset frequency of the Nu enhancement and the optimal frequency at which Nu is maximal, and how they depend on the Rayleigh number Ra and Prandtl number $\rm{Pr}$. From this, we construct a phase diagram in the 3D parameter space ($f$, $\rm{Ra}$, $\rm{Pr}$) and identify: (i) a regime where the modulation is too fast to affect $\rm{Nu}$; (ii) a moderate modulation regime, where $\rm{Nu}$ increases with decreasing $f$ and (iii) slow modulation regime, where $\rm{Nu}$ decreases with further decreasing $f$. Our findings provide a framework to study other types of turbulent flows with time-dependent forcing.

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arXiv2020

Subcritical behaviour in double diffusive convection within the diffusive regime

We conduct two- and three-dimensional simulations for double diffusive convection in the diffusive regime, where the fluid flow is driven by a destabilizing temperature gradient and stabilized by a stably stratified salinity gradient. We study how the heat flux, Reynolds number, and flow structures change with the density ratio $Λ$, which is the ratio of the buoyancy force induced by the salinity gradient to that by the temperature gradient. When $Λ$ increases from zero, the flow first behaves similarly as in pure Rayleigh-Bénard (RB) convection, both with respect to flow structure and to heat transport. The linear stability analysis of Baines & Gill (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 37, 1969, pp. 289-306) had estimated the critical density ratio $Λ_c$, above which the flow becomes stable. However, here we show that by using a large-scale circulation as initial condition (rather than the linear profiles assumed in the linear stability analysis), DDC in the diffusive regime can exhibit subcritical behaviour when $Λ> Λ_c$, i.e., coexistence of states at the same control parameters. Even though the density ratio becomes thousands times that of the critical value $Λ_c$, there is still convection with strongly enhanced heat transfer properties compared to the pure conduction case. We reveal the corresponding flow structures and find an unstably-stratified region sandwiched between two stably-stratified layers. Our results demonstrate the importance of the initial condition for DDC in the diffusive regime, especially in the situation of a large density ratio, which occurs in high-latitude ocean regions.

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arXiv2019

Convection-dominated dissolution for single and multiple immersed sessile droplets

We numerically investigate both single and multiple droplet dissolution with droplets consisting of lighter liquid dissolving in a denser host liquid. The significance of buoyancy is quantified by the Rayleigh number Ra which is the buoyancy force over the viscous damping force. In this study, Ra spans almost four decades from 0.1 to 400. We focus on how the mass flux, characterized by the Sherwood number Sh, and the flow morphologies depend on Ra. For single droplet dissolution, we first show the transition of the Sh(Ra) scaling from a constant value to $Sh\sim Ra^{1/4}$, which confirms the experimental results by Dietrich et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 794, 2016, pp. 45--67). The two distinct regimes, namely the diffusively- and the convectively-dominated regime, exhibit different flow morphologies: when Ra>=10, a buoyant plume is clearly visible which contrasts sharply to the pure diffusion case at low Ra. For multiple droplet dissolution, the well-known shielding effect comes into play at low Ra so that the dissolution rate is slower as compared to the single droplet case. However, at high Ra, convection becomes more and more dominant so that a collective plume enhances the mass flux, and remarkably the multiple droplets dissolve faster than a single droplet. This has also been found in the experiments by Laghezza et al. (Soft Matter, vol. 12, 2016, pp. 5787--5796). We explain this enhancement by the formation of a single, larger plume rather than several individual plumes. Moreover, there is an optimal Ra at which the enhancement is maximized, because the single plume is narrower at larger Ra, which thus hinders the enhancement. Our findings demonstrate a new mechanism in collective droplet dissolution, which is the merging of the plumes, that leads to non-trivial phenomena, contrasting the shielding effect.

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arXiv2019

Anomalous vortex motion induced by asymmetric vorticity distribution in rapidly rotating thermal convection

In rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection, columnar vortices advect horizontally in a stochastic manner. When the centrifugal buoyancy is present the vortices exhibit radial motions that can be explained through a Langevin-type stochastic model. Surprisingly, anomalous outward motion of cyclones is observed in a centrifugation-dominant flow regime, which is contrary to the well-known centrifugal effect. We interpret this phenomenon as a symmetry-breaking of both the population and vorticity magnitude of the vortices brought about by the centrifugal buoyancy. Consequently, the cyclones submit to the collective vortex motion dominated by the strong anticyclones. Our study provides new understanding of vortex motions that are widely present in many natural systems.

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arXiv2019

Crossover from ballistic to diffusive vortex motion in convection

Vortices play an unique role in heat and momentum transports in astro- and geo-physics, and it is also the origin of the Earth's dynamo. A question existing for a long time is whether the movement of vortices can be predicted or understood based on their historical data. Here we use both the experiments and numerical simulations to demonstrate some generic features of vortex motion and distribution. It can be found that the vortex movement can be described on the framework of Brownian particles where they move ballistically for the time shorter than some critical timescales, and then move diffusively. Traditionally, the inertia of vortex has often been neglected when one accounts for their motion, our results imply that vortices actually have inertial-induced memory such that their short term movement can be predicted. Extending to astro- and geo-physics, the critical timescales of transition are in the order of minutes for vortices in atmosphere and ocean, in which this inertial effect may often be neglected compared to other steering sources. However, the timescales for vortices are considerably larger which range from days to a year. It infers the new concept that not only the external sources alone, for example the solar wind, but also the internal source, which is the vortex inertia, can contribute to the short term Earth's magnetic field variation.

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arXiv2019

Quasistatic magnetoconvection: Heat transport enhancement and boundary layer crossing

We present a numerical study of quasistatic magnetoconvection in a cubic Rayleigh-Bénard (RB) convection cell subjected to a vertical external magnetic field. For moderate values of the Hartmann number Ha, we find an enhancement of heat transport. Furthermore, a maximum heat transport enhancement is observed at certain optimal $Ha_{opt}$. The enhanced heat transport may be understood as a result of the increased coherency of the thermal plumes, which are elementary heat carriers of the system. To our knowledge this is the first time that a heat transfer enhancement by the stabilising Lorentz force in quasistatic magnetoconvection has been observed. We further found that the optimal enhancement may be understood in terms of the crossing between the thermal and the momentum boundary layers (BL) and the fact that temperature fluctuations are maximum near the position where the BLs cross. These findings demonstrate that the heat transport enhancement phenomenon in the quasistatic magnetoconvection system belongs to the same universality class of stabilising$-$destabilising ($S$-$D$) turbulent flows as the systems of confined Rayleigh-Bénard (CRB), rotating Rayleigh-Bénard (RRB) and double-diffusive convection (DDC). This is further supported by the findings that the heat transport, boundary layer ratio and the temperature fluctuations in magnetoconvection at the boundary layer crossing point are similar to the other three cases.

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arXiv2018

A bouncing oil droplet in a stratified liquid and its sudden death

Droplets can self-propel when immersed in another liquid in which a concentration gradient is present. Here we report the experimental and numerical study of a self-propelling oil droplet in a vertically stratified ethanol/water mixture: At first, the droplet sinks slowly due to gravity, but then, before having reached its density matched position, jumps up suddenly. More remarkably, the droplet bounces repeatedly with an ever increasing jumping distance, until all of a sudden it stops after about 30 min. We identify the Marangoni stress at the droplet/liquid interface as responsible for the jumping: its strength grows exponentially because it pulls down ethanol-rich liquid, which in turn increases its strength even more. The jumping process can repeat because gravity restores the system. Finally, the sudden death of the jumping droplet is also explained. Our findings have demonstrated a type of prominent droplet bouncing inside a continuous medium with no wall or sharp interface.

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