arXiv subjects

Mattia Serra

Publications and source records attributed to Mattia Serra.

17 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Optimal Control of Short-Time Attractors in Active Fluid Flows

Objective Eulerian Coherent Structures (OECSs) and instantaneous Lyapunov exponents (iLEs) govern short-term material transport in fluid flows as Lagrangian Coherent Structures and the Finite-Time Lyapunov Exponent do over longer times. Attracting OECSs and iLEs reveal short-time attractors and are computable from the Eulerian rate-of-strain tensor. Here we devise an optimal control strategy to create short-time attractors in viscosity-dominated active fluids. By modulating the active stress intensity, our framework achieves a target profile of the minimum eigenvalue of the rate-of-strain tensor, controlling the location and shape of short-time attractors. We use numerical simulations to show that our optimal control strategy effectively achieves desired short-time attractors while rejecting disturbances. Combining optimal control and recent advances on coherent structures, our work offers a new perspective to steer material transport in unsteady flows, with applications in synthetic active nematics and multicellular systems.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2023

Spike formation theory in 3D flow separation

We develop a frame-invariant theory of material spike formation during flow separation over a no-slip boundary in three-dimensional flows with arbitrary time dependence. Based on the exact evolution of the largest principal curvature on near-wall material surfaces, our theory identifies fixed and moving separation. Our approach is effective over short time intervals and admits an instantaneous limit. As a byproduct, we derive explicit formulas for the evolution of the Weingarten map and the principal curvatures of any surface advected by general three-dimensional flows. The material backbone we identify acts first as a precursor and later as the centerpiece of Lagrangian flow separation. We discover previously undetected spiking points and curves where the separation backbones connect to the boundary and provide wall-based analytical formulas for their locations. We illustrate our results on several steady and unsteady flows.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2022

Optimal Locomotion for Limbless Crawlers

Limbless crawling is ubiquitous in biology, from cells to organisms. We develop and analyze a model for the dynamics of one-dimensional elastic crawlers, subject to active stress and deformation-dependent friction with the substrate. We find that the optimal active stress distribution that maximizes the crawler's center of mass displacement given a fixed amount of energy input is a traveling wave. This theoretical optimum corresponds to peristalsis-like extension-contraction waves observed in biological organisms, possibly explaining the prevalence of peristalsis as a convergent gait across species. Our theory elucidates key observations in biological systems connecting the anchoring phase of a crawler to the retrograde and prograde distinction seen in peristaltic waves among various organisms. Using our optimal gait solution, we derive a scaling relation between the crawling speed and body mass, explaining experiments on earthworms with three orders of magnitude body mass variations. Our results offer insights and tools for optimal bioinspired crawling robots design with finite battery capacity.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2021

Detecting Lagrangian coherent structures from sparse and noisy trajectory data

Many complex flows such as those arising from ocean plastics in geophysics or moving cells in biology are characterized by sparse and noisy trajectory datasets. We introduce techniques for identifying Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) of hyperbolic and elliptic nature in such datasets. Hyperbolic LCSs, which represent surfaces with maximal attraction or repulsion over a finite amount of time, are computed through a regularized least-squares approximation of the flow map gradient. Elliptic LCSs, which identify regions of coherent motion such as vortices and jets, are extracted using DBSCAN - a popular data clustering algorithm - combined with a systematic approach to choose parameters. We deploy these methods on various benchmark analytical flows and real-life experimental datasets ranging from oceanography to biology and show that they yield accurate results, despite sparse and noisy data. We also provide a lightweight computational implementation of these techniques as a user-friendly and straightforward Python code.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2021

Horizontal transport in oil-spill modeling

Simulating oil transport in the ocean can be done successfully provided that accurate ocean currents and surface winds are available -- this is often too big of a challenge. Deficient ocean currents can sometimes be remediated by parameterizing missing physics -- this is often not enough. In this chapter, we focus on some of the main problems oil-spill modelers face, which is determining accurate trajectories when the velocity may be missing important physics, or when the velocity has localized errors that result in large trajectory errors. A foundation of physical mechanisms driving motion in the ocean may help identify currents lacking certain types of physics, and the remedy. Recent progress in our understanding of motion in the upper centimeters of the ocean supports unconventional parameterizations; we present as an example the 2003 Point Wells oil spill which had remained unexplained until recently. When the velocity realistically represents trajectory forcing mechanisms, advanced Lagrangian techniques that build on the theory of Lagrangian Coherent Structures can bypass localized velocity errors by identifying regions of attraction likely to dictate fluid deformation. The usefulness of Objective Eulerian Coherent Structures is demonstrated to the oil-spill modeling community by revisiting the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico and predicting a prominent transport pattern from an imperfect altimetry velocity eight days in advance.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2021

Defect-mediated dynamics of coherent structures in active nematics

Active fluids, such as cytoskeletal filaments, bacterial colonies and epithelial cell layers, exhibit distinctive orientational coherence, often characterized by nematic order and topological defects. By contrast, little is known about positional coherence -- i.e., how a hidden dynamic skeleton organizes the underlying chaotic motion -- despite this being one of their most prominent and experimentally accessible features. Using a combination of dynamical systems theory, experiments on two-dimensional mixtures of microtubules and kinesin and hydrodynamic simulations, we characterize positional coherence in active nematics. These coherent structures can be identified in the framework of Lagrangian dynamics as moving attractors and repellers, which orchestrate complex motion. To understand the interaction of positional and orientational coherence on the dynamics of defects, we then analysed observations and simulations and see that +1/2 defects move and deform the attractors, thus functioning as control centers for collective motion. Additionally, we find that regions around isolated +1/2 defects undergo high bending and low stretching/shearing deformations, consistent with the local stress distribution. The stress is minimum at the defect, while high differential stress along the defect orientation induces folding. Our work offers a new perspective to describe self-organization in active fluids, with potential applications to multicellular systems.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2020

Objective early identification of kinematic instabilities in shear flows

A kinematic approach for the identification of flow instabilities is proposed. By defining a flow instability in the Lagrangian frame as the increased folding of lines of fluid particles, subtle perturbations and unstable growth thereof are detected early based solely on the curvature change of material lines over finite time. The material line curvature is objective, parametrization independent, and can be applied to flows of general complexity without knowledge of the base flow. An analytic connection between the growth of Eulerian velocity modes perturbing a general shear flow and the induced flow map and Lagrangian curvature change is derived. The approach is verified to capture instabilities promptly in a temporally developing jet flow, an unstable separated shear flow over a cambered airfoil, and in the onset of a wake instability behind a circular cylinder.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2020

Finite-time Lyapunov exponents in the instantaneous limit and material transport

Lagrangian techniques, such as the finite-time Lyapunov exponent (FTLE) and hyperbolic Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS), have become popular tools for analyzing unsteady fluid flows. These techniques identify regions where particles transported by a flow will converge to and diverge from over a finite-time interval, even in a divergence-free flow. Lagrangian analyses, however, are time consuming and computationally expensive, hence unsuitable for quickly assessing short-term material transport. A recently developed method called OECSs [Serra, M. and Haller, G., `Objective Eulerian Coherent Structures', Chaos 26(5), 2016] rigorously connected Eulerian quantities to short-term Lagrangian transport. This Eulerian method is faster and less expensive to compute than its Lagrangian counterparts, and needs only a single snapshot of a velocity field. Along the same line, here we define the instantaneous Lyapunov Exponent (iLE), the instantaneous counterpart of the FTLE, and connect the Taylor series expansion of the right Cauchy-Green deformation tensor to the infinitesimal integration time limit of the FTLE. We illustrate our results on geophysical fluid flows from numerical models as well as analytical flows, and demonstrate the efficacy of attracting and repelling instantaneous Lyapunov exponent structures in predicting short-term material transport.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2019

Vortex boundaries as barriers to diffusive vorticity transport in two-dimensional flows

We put forward the idea of defining vortex boundaries in planar flows as closed material barriers to the diffusive transport of vorticity. Such diffusive vortex boundaries minimize the leakage of vorticity from the fluid mass they enclose when compared to other nearby material curves. Building on recent results on passive diffusion barriers, we develop an algorithm for the automated identification of such structures from general, two-dimensional unsteady flow data. As examples, we identify vortex boundaries as vorticity diffusion barriers in two flows: an explicitly known laminar flow and a numerically generated turbulent Navier--Stokes flow.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2019

Search and rescue at sea aided by hidden flow structures

Every year hundreds of people die at sea because of vessel and airplane accidents. A key challenge in reducing the number of these fatalities is to make Search and Rescue (SAR) algorithms more efficient. Here we address this challenge by uncovering hidden TRansient Attracting Profiles (TRAPs) in ocean-surface velocity data. Computable from a single velocity-field snapshot, TRAPs act as short-term attractors for all floating objects. In three different ocean field experiments, we show that TRAPs computed from measured as well as modelled velocities attract deployed drifters and manikins emulating people fallen in the water. TRAPs, which remain hidden to prior flow diagnostics, thus provide critical information for hazard responses, such as SAR and oil spill containment, and hence have the potential to save lives and limit environmental disasters.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2019

The Kinematics of Lagrangian Flow Separation in External Aerodynamics

Kinematic aspects of flow separation in external aerodynamics are investigated in the Lagrangian frame. Specifically, the initial motion of upwelling fluid material from the wall is related to the long-term attracting manifolds in the flow field. While the short-time kinematics are governed by the formation of a material spike upstream of the zero-skin-friction point and ejection of particles in direction of the asymptotic separation line, the trajectories of the fluid tracers are guided by attracting ridges in the finite-time Lyapunov exponents once they leave the vicinity of the wall. The wall signature of this initial fluid upwelling event, the so-called \textit{spiking point} [Serra, M., Vetel, J., Haller, G., "Exact theory of material spike formation in flow separation", \textit{J. Fluid Mech.}, Vol. 845, 2018], is computed from the curvature of advected material lines and, for the first time, from high-order numerical derivatives of the wall-normal velocity obtained from direct numerical simulations of a circular cylinder and a cambered NACA 65(1)-412 airfoil. As the spline-based boundary parametrization of the airfoil profile induces oscillations, the principle spiking point can be recovered robustly through appropriate filtering. The short-term kinematics correlate strongly with the scaling lengths in the boundary layer.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2019

Material spike formation in high Reynolds number flow separation

We apply the recent frame-invariant theory of separation spike formation to complex unsteady flows including a turbulent separation bubble, an impinging jet, and flows around a freely moving cylinder and a freely rotating ellipse. We show how the theory captures the onset of material spike formation, without any assumption on the flow type (steady, periodic, unsteady) or separation type (on- or off-wall, fixed or moving boundaries). We uncover new phenomena, such as the transition from on-wall to off-wall separation, the merger of initially distinct spikes, and the presence of severe material spikes that remain hidden to previous approaches. These results unveil how an involved network of spikes arises, interacts, and merges dynamically, leading to the final ejection of particles from the wall in highly transient flow separation processes.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2018

Variational Lagrangian formulation of the Euler equations for incompressible flow: A simple derivation

In 1966, Arnold [1] showed that the Lagrangian flow of ideal incompressible fluids (described by Euler equations) coincide with the geodesic flow on the manifold of volume preserving diffeomorphisms of the fluid domain. Arnold's proof and the subsequent work on this topic rely heavily on the properties of Lie groups and Lie algebras which remain unfamiliar to most fluid dynamicists. In this note, we provide a simple derivation of Arnold's result which only uses the classical methods of calculus of variations. In particular, we show that the Lagrangian flow maps generated by the solutions of the incompressible Euler equations coincide with the stationary curves of an appropriate energy functional when the extremization is carried out over the set of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2017

Uncovering the Edge of the Polar Vortex

The polar vortices play a crucial role in the formation of the ozone hole and can cause severe weather anomalies. Their boundaries, known as the vortex `edges', are typically identified via methods that are either frame-dependent or return non-material structures, and hence are unsuitable for assessing material transport barriers. Using two-dimensional velocity data on isentropic surfaces in the northern hemisphere, we show that elliptic Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) identify the correct outermost material surface dividing the coherent vortex core from the surrounding incoherent surf zone. Despite the purely kinematic construction of LCSs, we find a remarkable contrast in temperature and ozone concentration across the identified vortex boundary. We also show that potential vorticity-based methods, despite their simplicity, misidentify the correct extent of the vortex edge. Finally, exploiting the shrinkage of the vortex at various isentropic levels, we observe a trend in the magnitude of vertical motion inside the vortex which is consistent with previous results.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2016

Efficient Computation of Null-Geodesic with Applications to Coherent Vortex Detection

Recent results suggest that boundaries of coherent fluid vortices (elliptic coherent structures) can be identified as closed null-geodesics of appropriate Lorentzian metrics defined on the flow domain. Here we derive an automated method for computing such null-geodesics based on the geometry of the underlying geodesic flow. Our approach simplifies and improves existing procedures for computing variationally defined Eulerian and Lagrangian vortex boundaries. As an illustration, we compute objective vortex boundaries from satellite-inferred ocean velocity data. A MATLAB implementation of our method is available as supplementary material.

math.DS↗

arXiv2016

Forecasting Long-Lived Lagrangian Vortices from their Objective Eulerian Footprints

We derive a non-dimensional metric to quantify the expected Lagrangian persistence of objectively defined Eulerian vortices in two-dimensional unsteady flows. This persistence metric is the averaged deviation of the vorticity from its spatial mean over the Eulerian vortex, normalized by the instantaneous material leakage from the Eulerian vortex. The metric offers a model-independent and frame-independent tool for uncovering the instantaneous Eulerian signature of long-lived Lagrangian vortices. Using satellite-derived ocean velocity data, we show that Lagrangian vortex-persistence predictions by our metric significantly outperform those inferred from other customary Eulerian diagnostics, such as the potential vorticity gradient and the Okubo-Weiss criterion.

math.DS↗

arXiv2015

Objective Eulerian Coherent Structures

We define objective Eulerian Coherent Structures (OECSs) in two-dimensional, non-autonomous dynamical systems as instantaneously most influential material curves. Specifically, OECSs are stationary curves of the averaged instantaneous material stretching-rate or material shearing-rate functionals. From these objective (frame-invariant) variational principles, we obtain explicit differential equations for hyperbolic, elliptic and parabolic OECSs. As illustration, we compute OECSs in an unsteady ocean velocity data set. In comparison to structures suggested by other common Eulerian diagnostic tools, we find OECSs to be the correct short-term cores of observed trajectory deformation patterns.

math.DS↗